Other people's money, and how the bankers use it

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

AND HOW THE BANKERS USE IT

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

AND HOW THE BANKERS USE IT

BY

LOUIS D. BRANDELS

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1913, 1914, by
The McClure Pubijcations

Copyright, 1914, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved

H6-

n

March, 19H

PREFACE

While Louis D. Brandeis's series of articles
on the money trust was running in Harper's
Weekly many inquiries came about publication
in more accessible permanent form. Even with-
out such urgence through the mail, however, it
would have been clear that these articles inevit-
ably constituted a book, since they embodied an
analysis and a narrative by that mind which, on
the great industrial movements of our era, is the
most expert in the United States. The inquiries
meant that the attentive public recognized that
here was a contribution to history. Here was the
clearest and most profound treatment ever
published on that part of our business develop-
ment which, as President Wilson and other wise
men have said, has come to constitute the greatest
of our problems. The story of our time is the
story of industry. No scholar of the future will
be able to describe our era with authority unless
he comprehends that expansion and concentration
which followed the harnessing of steam and elec-
tricity, the great uses of the change, and the great

vi PREFACE

excesses. No historian of the future, in my opin-
ion, will find among our contemporary documents
so masterful an analysis of why concentration
went astray. I am but one among many who
look upon jMr. Brandeis as having, in the field of
economics, the most inventive and sound mind
of our time. While his articles were running in
Harper's Weekly I had ample opportunity to
know how widespread was the belief among
intelligent men that this brilliant diagnosis of
our money trust was the most important contri-
bution to current thought in many years.

"Great" is one of the words that I do not use
loosely, and I look upon Mr. Brandeis as a great
man. In the composition of his intellect, one
of the most important elements is his compre-
hension of figures. As one of the leading finan-
ciers of the country said to me, "Mr. Brandeis's
greatness as a lawyer is part of his greatness as
a mathematician." My views on this subject
are sufficiently indicated in the following edito-
rial in Harper's Weekly.

ARITHMETIC

About five years before tlic Metropolitan Traction
Compunj' of New York went into tlie hands of a receiver,
Mr. Bnindeis came down from lioston, and in a speech at
Cooper Union prophesied that that company must fail,

PREFACE vii

Leading bankers in New York and Boston were heartily
recommending the stock to their customers. Mr. Brandeis
made his prophecy merely by analyzing the published
figures. How did he win in the Pinchot-Glavis-Ballinger
controversy? In various ways, no doubt; but perhaps the
most critical step was when he calculated just how long it
would take a fast worker to go through the Glavis-Ballinger
record and make a judgment of it; whereupon he decided
that Mr. Wickersham could not have made his report at
the time it was stated to have been made, and therefore it
must have been predated.

Most of Mr. Brandeis's other contributions to current
history have involved arithmetic. When he succeeded in
preventing a raise in freight rates, it was through an exact
analysis of cost. When he got Savings Bank Insurance
started in Massachusetts, it was by being able to figure what
insurance ought to cost. When he made the best contract
between a city and a public utility that exists in this country,
a definite grasp of the gas business was necessary — com-
bined, of course, with the wisdom and originality that make
a statesman. He could not have invented the preferential
shop if that new idea had not been founded on a precise
knowledge of the conditions in the garment trades. When
he established before the United States Supreme Court the
constitutionality of legislation affecting women only, he
relied much less upon reason than upon the amount of knowl-
edge displayed of what actually happens to women when
they are overworked — which, while not arithmetic, is built
on the same intellectual quality. Nearly two years before
Mr. Mellen resigned from the New Haven Railroad, Mr.
Brandeis wrote to the present editor of this paper a private
letter in which he said:

"When the New Haven reduces its dividends and Mellen
resigns, the ' Decline of New Haven and Fall of Mellen' will

viii PREFACE

make a dramatic story of human interest with a moral — or
two — including the evils of private monopoly. Events can-
not be long deferred, and possibly you may want to prepare
for their coming.

"Anticipating the future a little, I suggest the following
as an epitaph or obituary notice:

"Mellen was a masterful man, resourceful, courageous,
broad of view. He fired the imagination of New England;
but, being obUque of vision, merely distorted its judgment
and silenced its conscience. For a while he trampled with
impunity on laws human and divine; but, as he was obsessed
with the delusion that two and two make five, he fell, at
last, a victim to the relentless rules of humble arithmetic.

'"Remember, O Stranger, Arithmetic is the first of the
sciences and the mother of safety.'"

The exposure of the bad jBnancial management
of the New Haven raikoad, more than any-
other one thing, led to the exposure and com-
prehension of the wasteful methods of big busi-
ness all over the country and that exposure of
the New Haven was the almost single-handed
work of Mr. Brandeis. He is a person who
fights against any odds while it is necessary
to fight and stops fighting as soon as the fight
is won. For a long time very respectable and
honest leaders of finance said that his charges
against the New Haven were unsound and in-
excusable. He kept ahead. A year before the
actual crash came, however, he ceased worrying,
for he knew the work had been carried far enough

PREFACE ix

to complete itself. When someone asked him
to take part in some little controversy shortly
before the collapse, he replied, ''That fight does
not need me any longer. Time and arithmetic
will do the rest."

This grasp of the concrete is combined in Mr.
Brandeis with an equally distinguished grasp of
bearing and significance. His imagination is as
notable as his understanding of business. In
those accomplishments which have given him his
place in American life, the two sides of his mind
have worked together. The arrangement be-
tween the Gas Company and the City of Boston
rests on one of the guiding principles of Mr.
Brandeis' s life, that no contract is good that is
not advantageous to both parties to it. Behind
his understanding of the methods of obtaining
insurance and the proper cost of it to the laboring
man lay a philosophy of the vast advantage to
the fibre and energy of the community that would
come from devising methods by which the labor-
ing classes could make themselves comfortable
through their whole lives and thus perhaps mak-
ing unnecessary elaborate systems of state help.
The most important ideas put forth in the
Armstrong Committee Report on insurance had
been previously suggested by Mr. Brandeis,

X PREFACE

acting as counsel for the Equitable policy
holders. Business and the more important
statesmanship were intimately combined in the
management of the Protocol in New York,
which has done so much to improve condi-
tions in the clothing industry. The welfare
of the laborer and his relation to his employer
seems to ]\Ir. Brandeis, as it does to all the
most competent thinkers today, to constitute
the most important question we have to solve,
and he won the case, coming up to the Supreme
Court of the United States, from Oregon, estab-
lishing the constitutionality of special protective
legislation for women. In the IMinimum Wage
case, also from the State of Oregon, which is
about to be heard before the Supreme Court, he
takes up what is really a logical sequence of the
limitation of women's hours in certain industries,
since it would be a futile performance to limit
their hours and then allow their wages to be cut
down in consequence. These industrial activities
are in large part an expression of liis deep and
ever growing sympathy with the working people
and understanding of them. Florence Kelley
once said: "No man since Lincoln has understood
the common people as Louis Brandies does."

PREFACE xi

While the majority of Mr. Brandeis's great
progressive achievements have been connected
with the industrial system, some have been polit-
ical in a more limited sense. I worked with him
through the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, and
I never saw a grasp of detail more brilliantly
combined with high constructive ethical and
political thinking. After the man who knew
most about the details of the Interior Depart-
ment had been cross-examined by Mr. Brandeis
he came and sat down by me and said: "Mr.
Hapgood, I have no respect for you. I do not
think your motives in this agitation are good
motives, but I want to say that you have a
wonderful lawyer. He knows as much about
the Interior Department today as I do." In
that controversy, the power of the administra-
tion and of the ruling forces in the House and
Senate were combined to protect Secretary
Ballinger and prevent the truth from coming
to light. Mr. Brandeis, in leading the fight or
the conservation side, was constantly haunted
by the idea that there was a mystery somewhere.
The editorial printed above hints at how ho
solved the mystery, but it would require much
more space to tell the other sides, the enthus-
iasm for conservation, the convincing arguments

xii PREFACE

for higher standards in office, the connection
of this conspiracy with the country's larger
needs. Seldom is an audience at a hearing so
moved as it was by Mr. Brandeis's final plea to
the committee.

Possibly his work on railroads will turn out to be
the most significant among the many things Mr.
Brandeis has done. His arguments in 1910-11
before the Interstate Commerce Commission
against the raising of rates, on the ground that
the way for railroads to be more prosperous was
to be more efficient, made efficiency a national
idea. It is a cardinal point in his philosophy
that the only real progress toward a higher na-
tional life will come through efficiency in all our
activities. The seventy-eight questions addressed
to the railroads by the Interstate Commerce
Commission in December, 1913, embody what
is probably the most comprehensive embodiment
of his thought on the subject.

On nothing has he ever worked harder than on
his diagnosis of the Money Trust, and when his
life comes to be written (I hope many years hence)
this will be ranked with his railroad work for
its effect in accelerating industrial changes. It
is indeed more than a coincidence that so many
of the things he has been contending for have

PREFACE xiii

come to pass. It is seldom that one man puts
one idea, not to say many ideas, effectively
before the world, but it is no exaggeration to say
that Mr. Brandeis is responsible for the now wide-
spread recognition of the inherent weakness of
great size. He was the first person who set forth
effectively the doctrine that there is a limit to the
size of greatest efficiency, and the successful demon-
stration of that truth is a profound contribu-
tion to the subject of trusts. The demonstration
is powerfully put in his testimony before the
Senate Committee in 1911, and it is powerfully
put in this volume. In destroying the delusion
that efficiency was a common incident of size, he
emphasized the possibility of efficiency through
intensive development of the individual, thus
connecting this principle with his whole study of
efficiency, and pointing the way to industrial
democracy.

Not less notable than the intellect and the
constructive ability that have gone into Mr.
Brandeis' s work are the exceptional moral quali-
ties. Any powerful and entirely sincere crusader
must sacrifice much. Mr. Brandeis has sacrificed
much in money, in agreeableness of social life,
in effort, and he has done it for principle and for
human happiness. His power of intensive work,

xiv PREFACE

his sustained interest and will, and his courage
have been necessary for leadership. No man
could have done what he has done without
being willing to devote his life to making his
dreams come true.

Nor should anyone make the mistake, because
the labors of Mr. Brandeis and others have re-
cently brought about changes, that the system
which was being attacked has been undermined.
The currency bill has been passed, and as these
words are written, it looks as if a group of trust
bills would be passed. But systems are not
ended in a day. Of the truths which are embod-
ied in the essays printed in this book, some are
being carried out now, but it will be many, many
years before the whole idea can be made effective;
and there will, therefore, be many, many years
during which active citizens will be struggling for
those principles which are here so clearly, so
eloquently, so conclusively set forth.

The articles reprinted here were all written

before November, 1913. "The Failure of Banker

Management" appeared in Harper's Weekly

Aug. IG, 1913; the other articles, between Nov.

22, 1913 and Dec. 17, 1914.

Norman Hapgood.
March, 1914.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Our Financial Oligarchy 1

II How THE Combiners Combine 28

III Interlocking Directorates 51

IV Serve One Master Only! 69

V What Publicity Can Do 92

VI Where the Banker is Superfluous . .109
VII Big Men and Little Business . . . .135

VIII A Curse of Bigness 162

IX The Failure of Banker- management . . 189
X The Inefficiency of the Oligarchs . . 201

XV

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

AND HOW THE BANKERS USE IT

CHAPTER I
OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY

President Wilson, when Governor, declared
in 1911:

"The great monopoly in this country is the
money monopoly. So long as that exists, our
old variety and freedom and individual energy of
development are out of the question. A great
industrial nation is controlled by its system of
credit. Our system of credit is concentrated.
The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our
activities are in the hands of a few men, who,
even if their actions be honest and intended for
the public interest, are necessarily concentrated
upon the great undertakings in which their own
money is involved and who, necessarily, by every
reason of their own limitations, chill and check
and destroy genuine economic freedom. This
is the greatest question of all; and to this, states-

2 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

men must address themselves with an earnest
determination to serve the long future and the
true hberties of men."

The Pujo Committee — appointed in 1912 —
found :

"Far more dangerous than all that has hap-
pened to us in the past in the way of ehmination
of competition in industry is the control of credit
through the domination of these groups over our
banks and industries." . . .

"Whether under a different currency system
the resources in our banks would be greater or
less is comparatively immaterial if they continue
to be controlled by a small group." . . .

"It is impossible that there should be compe-
tition with all the facilities for raising money or
selling large issues of bonds in the hands of these
few bankers and their partners and allies, who
together dominate the financial policies of most
of the existing systems. . . . The acts of this
inner group, as here described, have nevertheless
been more destructive of competition than any-
thing accomplished by the trusts, for they strike
at the very vitals of potential competition in
every industry that is under their protection, a
condition which if permitted to continue, will

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 3

render impossible all attempts to restore nor-
mal competitive conditions in the industrial
world. . . .

"If the arteries of credit now clogged well-nigh
to choking by the obstructions created through
the control of these groups are opened so that they
may be permitted freely to play their important
part in the financial system, competition in large
enterprises will become possible and business can
be conducted on its merits instead of being sub-
ject to the tribute and the good will of this hand-
ful of self-constituted trustees of the national
prosperity."

The promise of New Freedom was joyously
proclaimed in 1913.

The facts which the Pujo Investigating Com-
mittee and its able Counsel, Mr. Samuel Unter-
myer, have laid before the country, show clearly
the means by which a few men control the busi-
ness of America. The report proposes meas-
ures which promise some relief. Additional reme-
dies will be proposed. Congress will soon be
called upon to act.

How shall the emancipation be wrought? On
what lines shall we proceed? The facts, when
fully understood, will teach us.

4 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

THE DOMINANT ELEMENT

The dominant element in our financial oli-
garchy is the investment banker. Associated
banks, trust companies and life insurance com-
panies are his tools. Controlled railroads, public
service and industrial corporations are his sub-
jects. Though properly but middlemen, these
bankers bestride as masters America's business
world, so that practically no large enterprise can
be undertaken successfully without their partici-
pation or approval. These bankers are, of
course, able men possessed of large fortunes;
but the most potent factor in their control of
business is not the possession of extraordinary
ability or huge wealth. The key to their power is
Combination — concentration intensive and com-
prehensive— advancing on three distinct lines:

First: There is the obvious consolidation of
banks and trust companies; the less obvious
afhliations — through stockholdings, voting trusts
and interlocking directorates — of banking insti-
tutions which are not legally connected; and
the joint transactions, gentlemen's agreements,
and "banking ethics" which eliminate competi-
tion among the investment bankers.

Second: There is the consolidation of railroads
into huge systems, the large combinations of

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 5

public service corporations and the formation of
industrial trusts, which, by making businesses so
"big" that local, independent banking concerns
cannot alone supply the necessary funds, has
created dependence upon the associated New
York bankers.

But combination, however intensive, along
these lines only, could not have produced the
Money Trust — another and more potent factor
of combination was added.

Third: Investment bankers, like J. P. Morgan
& Co., dealers in bonds, stocks and notes, en-
croached upon the functions of the three other
classes of corporations with which their business
brought them into contact. They became the
directing power in railroads, public service and
industrial companies through which our great
business operations are conducted — the makers
of bonds and stocks. They became the directing
power in the life insurance companies, and other
corporate reservoirs of the people's savings — the
buyers of bonds and stocks. They became the
directing power also in banks and trust companies
— the depositaries of the quick capital of the coun-
try— the life blood of business, with which they
and others carried on their operations. Thus
four distinct functions, each essential to business.

6 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

and each exercised, originall}", by a distinct set of
men, became united in the investment banker.
It is to this union of business functions that the
existence of the Money Trust is mainly due.*

The development of our financial oligarchy
followed, in this respect, lines with which the
history of political despotism has familiarized us :
— usurpation, proceeding by gradual encroach-
ment rather than by violent acts; subtle and
often long-concealed concentration of distinct
functions, which are beneficent when separately
administered, and dangerous onl}" when combined
in the same persons. It was by processes such
as these that Caisar Augustus became master of
Rome. The makers of our own Constitution
had in mind Uke dangers to our political liberty
when they provided so carefully for the separation
of governmental powers.

THE PROPER SPHERE OF THE INVESTMENT
BANKER

The original function of the investment banker
was that of dealer in bonds, stocks and notes;
buying mainly at wholesale from corporations,

*ObviousIj' only a few of (ho invest nicrit bimkors oxor-
risc this Krcat power; but many othors i)erf(jrin important func-
tions in the eystem, as hereinafter described.

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 7

muDicipalities, states and governments which
need money, and selHng to those seeking invest-
ments. The banker performs, in this respect, the
function of a merchant; and the function is a
very useful one. Large business enterprises are
conducted generally by corporations. The per-
manent capital of corporations is represented by
bonds and stocks. The bonds and stocks of the
more important corporations are owned, in large
part, by small investors, who do not participate
in the management of the company. Corpora-
tions require the aid of a banker-middleman,
for they lack generally the reputation and clien-
tele essential to selling their own bonds and stocks
direct to the investor. Investors in corporate
securities, also, require the services of a banker-
middleman. The number of securities upon the
market is very large. Only a part of these se-
curities is listed on the New York Stock Ex-
change; but its listings alone comprise about
sixteen hundred different issues aggregating
about $26,500,000,000, and each year new list-
ings are made averaging about two hundred
and thu-ty-three to an amount of $1,500,000,000.
For a small investor to make an intelligent selec-
tion from these many corporate securities — in-
deed, to pass an intelligent judgment upon a

8 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

single one — is ordinarily impossible. He lacks the
abilit}', the facilities, the training and the time
essential to a proper investigation. Unless his
purchase is to be little better than a gamble, he
needs the advice of an expert, who, combining
special knowledge with judgment, has the facil-
ities and incentive to make a thorough investiga-
tion. This dependence, both of corporations and
of investors, upon the banker has grown in recent
years, since women and others who do not par-
ticipate in the management, have become the
owners of so large a part of the stocks and bonds
of our great corporations. Over half of the
stockholders of the American Sugar Refining
Company and nearly half of the stockholders of
the Pennsylvania RaUroad and of the New York,
New Haven & Hartford Railroad are women.

Good- will — the possession by a dealer of num-
erous and valuable regular customers — is always
an important element in merchandising. But in
the business of selling bonds and stocks, it is of
exceptional value, for the very reason that the
small investor relics so largely upon the banker's
judgment. This confidential relation of the
banker to customers — and the knowledge of the
customers' private afTairs acquired incidentally —

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 9

is often a determining factor in the marketing of
securities. With the advent of Big Business
such good-will possessed by the older banking
houses, preeminently J. P. Morgan & Co. and
their Philadelphia House called Drexel & Co.,
by Lee, Higginson & Co. and Kidder, Peabody,
& Co. of Boston, and by Kuhn, Loeb & Co. of
New York, became of enhanced importance.
The volume of new security issues was greatly
increased by huge railroad consolidations, the
development of the holding companies, and par-
ticularly by the formation of industrial trusts.
The rapidly accumulating savings of our people
sought investment. The field of operations for
the dealer in securities was thus much enlarged.
And, as the securities were new and untried, the
services of the investment banker were in great
demand, and his powers and profits increased
accordingly.

CONTROLLING THE SECURITY MAKERS

But this enlargement of their legitimate field
of operations did not satisfy investment bankers.
They were not content merely to deal in securities.
They desired to manufacture them also. They
became promoters, or allied themselves with
promoters. Thus it was that J. P. Morgan <fe

10 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Company formed the Steel Trust, the Harvester
Trust and the Shipping Trust. And, adding the
duties of undertaker to those of midwife, the
investment bankers became, in times of corporate
disaster, members of security-holders' "Pro-
tective Committees"; then they participated as
"Reorganization Managers" in the reincarnation
of the unsuccessful corporations and ultimately
became directors. It was in this way that the
Morgan associates acquired their hold upon the
Southern Railway, the Northern Pacific, the
Reading, the Erie, the Pere Marquette, the
Chicago and Great Western, and the Cincinnati,
Hamilton & Dayton. Often they insured the
continuance of such control by the device of the
voting trust; but even where no voting trust was
created, a secure hold was acquired upon re-
organization. It was in this way also that Kuhn,
Loeb & Co. became potent in the Union Pacific
and in the Baltimore & Ohio.

But the banker's participation in the manage-
ment of corporations was not limited to cases
of promotion or reorganization. An urgent or
extensive need of new money was considered a
BufTicicnt reason for the banker's entering a
board of directors. Often without even such
excuse the investment banker has secured a

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 11

place upon the Board of Directors, through his
powerful influence or the control of his customers'
proxies. Such seems to have been the fatal en-
trance of Mr. Morgan into the management of
the then prosperous New York, New Haven &
Hartford Railroad, in 1892. When once a
banker has entered the Board — whatever may
have been the occasion — his grip proves tena-
cious and his influence usually supreme; for he
controls the supply of new money.

The investment banker is naturally on the
lookout for good bargains in bonds and stocks.
Like other merchants, he wants to buy his
merchandise cheap. But when he becomes di-
rector of a corporation, he occupies a position
which prevents the transaction by which he
acquires its corporate securities from being
properly called a bargain. Can there be real
bargaining where the same man is on both sides
of a trade? The investment banker, through his
controlling influence on the Board of Directors,
decides that the corporation shall issue and sell
the securities, decides the price at which it shall
sell them, and decides that it shall sell the
securities to himself. The fact that there are
other directors besides the banker on the Board

12 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

does not, in practice, prevent this being the result.
The banker, who holds the purse-strings, becomes
usually the dominant spirit. Through voting-
trusteeships, exclusive financial agencies, mem-
bership on executive or finance committees, or by
mere directorships, J. P. Morgan & Co., and their
associates, held such financial power in at least
thirty-two transportation systems, public utility
corporations and industrial companies — com-
panies with an aggregate capitalization of S17,-
273,000,000. IMainly for corporations so con-
trolled, J. P. Morgan & Co. procured the public
marketing in ten years of security issues aggre-
gating $1,950,000^,000. This huge sum does not
include any issues marketed privately, nor any
issues, however mai'keted, of intra-state cor-
porations. Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and a few other
investment bankers exercise similar control over
many other corporations.

CONTROLLING SECURITY BUYERS

Such control of railroads, public service and
industrial corporations assures to the investment
bankers an ample supply of securities at attract-
ive prices; and merchandise well bought is half
sold. But these bond and stock merchants are
not disposed to take even a slight risk as to their

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 13

ability to market their goods. They saw that if
they could control the security-buyers, as well as
the security-makers, investment banking would,
indeed, be "a happy hunting ground"; and they
have made it so.

The numerous small investors cannot, in the
strict sense, be controlled; but their dependence
upon the banker insures their being duly in-
fluenced. A large part, however, of all bonds
issued and of many stocks are bought by the
prominent corporate investors; and most promi-
nent among these are the life insurance companies,
the trust companies, and the banks. The purchase
of a security by these institutions not only relieves
the banker of the merchandise, but recommends
it strongly to the small investor, who believes
that these institutions are wisely managed. These
controlled corporate investors are not only large
customers, but may be particularly accommo-
dating ones. Individual investors are moody.
They buy only when they want to do so. They
are sometimes inconveniently reluctant. Cor-
porate investors, if controlled, may be made to
buy when the bankers need a market. It was
natural that the investment bankers proceeded to
get control of the great life insurance companies,
as well as of the trust companies and the banks.

14 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

The field thus occupied is uncommonly rich.
The life insurance companies are our leading
institutions for savings. Their huge surplus and
reserves, augmented daily, are always clamoring
for investment. No panic or money shortage
stops the inflow of new money from the perennial
stream of premiums on existing policies and inter-
est on existing investments. The three great
companies — the New York Life, the Mutual of
New York, and the Equitable — would have over
$55,000,000 of new money to invest annually,
even if they did not issue a single new policy.
In 1904 — just before the Armstrong investiga-
tion— these three companies had together $1,247,-
331,738.18 of assets. They had issued in that
year $1,025,671,126 of new poUcies. The New
York legislature placed in 1906 certain restrictions
upon their growth; so that their new business
since has averaged $547,384,212, or only fifty-
three per cent, of what it was in 1904. But the
aggregate assets of these companies increased in
the last eight years to $1,817,052,260.36. At the
time of the Armstrong investigation the average
age of these tliree companies was fifty-six years.
The growth of assets in the last eight years was about
half as large as the total growth in the preceding
fifty-six years. These three companies must

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 15

invest annually about $70,000,000 of new money;
and besides, many old investments expire or are
changed and the proceeds must be reinvested. A
large part of all life insurance surplus and re-
serves are invested in bonds. The aggregate
bond investments of these three companies on
January 1, 1913, was $1,019,153,268.93.

It was natural that the investment bankers
should seek to control these never-failing reser-
voirs of capital. George W. Perkins was Vice-
President of the New York Life, the largest of
the companies. While remaining such he was
made a partner in J. P. Morgan & Co., and in
the four years preceding the Armstrong investi-
gation, his firm sold the New York Life $38,804,
918.51 in securities. The New York Life is a
mutual company, supposed to be controlled by
its policy-holders. But, as the Pujo Committee
funds 'Hhe so-called control of life insurance com-
panies by policy-holders through mutualization
is a farce" and "its only result is to keep in
office a self-constituted, self-perpetuating man-
agement."

The Equitable Life Assurance Society is a
stock company and is controlled by $100,000 of
stock. The dividend on this stock is limited by
law to seven per cent.; but in 1910 Mr. Morgan

16 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

paid about S3, 000,000 for $51,000, par value of
this stock, or S5,SS2.35 a share. The dividend
return on the stock investment is less than one-
eighth of one per cent. ; but the assets controlled
amount now to over $500,000,000. And certain
of these assets had an especial value for invest-
ment bankers; — namely, the large holdings of
stock in banks and trust companies.

The Armstrong investigation disclosed the
extent of financial power exerted through the
insurance company holdings of bank and trust
company stock. The Committee recommended
legislation compelling the insurance companies
to dispose of the stock within five years. A law
to that effect was enacted, but the time was later
extended. The companies then disposed of a
part of theu" bank and trust company stocks;
but, as the insurance companies were controlled
by the investment bankers, these gentlemen
sold the bank and trust company stocks to
themselves.

Referring to such purchases from the Mutual
Life, as well as from the Equitable, the Pujo
Committee found:

"Here, then, were stocks of fiv'e important
trui-t companies and one of our largest national

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 17

banks in New York City that had been held by
these two life insurance companies. Within
five years all of these stocks, so far as distributed
by the insurance companies, have found their
way into the hands of the men who virtually con-
trolled or were identified with the management
of the insurance companies or of their close allies
and associates, to that extent thus further en-
trenching them."

The banks and trust companies are deposi-
taries, in the main, not of the people's savings,
but of the business man's quick capital. Yet,
since the investment banker acquired control
of banks and trust companies, these institutions
also have become, like the life companies, large
purchasers of bonds and stocks. Many of our
national banks have invested in this manner a
large part of all their resources, including cap-
ital, surplus and deposits. The bond invest-
ments of some banks exceed by far the aggre-
gate of their capital and surplus, and nearly
equal their loanable deposits.

CONTROLLING OTHER PEOPLE's QUICK CAPITAL

The goose that lays golden eggs has been con-
sidered a most valuable possession. But even
more profitable is the privilege of taking the

18 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

golden eggs laid by somebody else's goose.
The investment bankers and their associates now
enjoy that privilege. They control the people
through the people's own money. If the bank-
ers' power were commensurate only with their
wealth, they would have relatively little influence
on American business. Vast fortunes like those
of the Astors are no doubt regrettable. They
are inconsistent with democracy. They are un-
social. And they seem peculiarly unjust when
they represent largely unearned increment. But
the wealth of the Astors does not endanger
political or industrial liberty. It is insignificant
in amount as compared with the aggregate wealth
of America, or even of New York City. It lacks
significance largely because its owners have only
the income from their own wealth. The Astor
wealth is static. The wealth of the Morgan
associates is dynamic. The power and the
growth of power of our financial oligarchs comes
from wielding the savings and quick capital of
others. In two of the tliree groat life insurance
companies the influence of J. P. Morgan & Co.
and their associates is exerted without any in-
dividual investment by them whatsoever. Even
in the E(}uitable, where Mr. Morgan bought an
actual majority of all the outstanding stock, his

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 19

investment amounts to little more than one-half
of one per cent, of the assets of the company.
The fetters which bind the people are forged from
the people's own gold.

But the reservoir of other people's money,
from which the investment bankers now draw
their greatest power, is not the life insurance
companies, but the banks and the trust companies.
Bank deposits represent the really quick capital
of the nation. They are the life blood of busi-
nesses. Their effective force is much greater than
that of an equal amount of wealth permanently
invested. The 34 banks and trust companies,
which the Pujo Committee declared to be directly
controlled by the Morgan associates, held $1,983,-
000,000 in deposits. Control of these institutions
means the ability to lend a large part of these
funds, directly and indirectly, to themselves; and
what is often even more important, the power
to prevent the funds being lent to any rival in-
terests. These huge deposits can, in the dis-
cretion of those in control, be used to meet the
temporary needs of their subject corporations.
When bonds and stocks are issued to finance
permanently these corporations, the bank depos-
its can, in large part, be loaned by the investment

20 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

bankers in control to themselves and their asso-
ciates; so that securities bought may be carried
by them, until sold to investors. Or these bank
deposits may be loaned to allied bankers, or
jobbers in securities, or to speculators, to enable
them to carry the bonds or stocks. Easy money
tends to make securities rise in the mai-ket.
Tight money nearly always makes them fall.
The control by the leading investment bankers
over the banks and trust companies is so great,
that they can often determine, for a time, the mar-
ket for money by lending or refusing to lend on
the Stock Exchange. In this way, among others,
they have power to affect the general trend of
prices in bonds and stocks. Their power over a
particular security is even greater. Its sale on
the market may depend upon whether the secur-
ity is favored or discriminated against when
offered to the banks and trust companies, as
collateral for loans.

Furthermore, it is the investment banker's
access to other people's money in controlled
banks and trust companies which alone enables
any individual banking concern to take so large
part of the annual output of bonds and stocks.
The banker's own capital, however large, would
soon be exhausted. And even the loanable

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 21

funds of the banks would often be exhausted,
but for the large deposits made in those banks
by the life insurance, railroad, public service, and
industrial corporations which the bankers also
control. On December 31, 1912, the three lead-
ing life insurance companies had deposits in
banks and trust companies aggregating $13,839,-
189.08. As the Pujo Committee finds:

''The men who through their control over the
funds of oiu" railroads and industrial companies
are able to direct where such funds shall be kept
and thus to create these great reservoirs of the
people's money, are the ones who are in position
to tap those reservoirs for the ventures in which
they are interested and to prevent their being
tapped for purposes of which they do not approve.
The latter is quite as important a factor as the
former. It is the controlling consideration in its
effect on competition in the railroad and industrial
world."

HAVING YOUR CAKE AND EATING IT TOO

But the power of the investment banker over
other people's money is often more direct and
effective than that exerted through controlled
banks and trust companies. J. P. Morgan & Co.
achieve the supposedly impossible feat of having

22 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

their cake and eating it too. They buy the bonds
and stocks of controlled railroads and industrial
concerns, and pay the pui'chase price; and still
do not part with their money. This is accom-
plished by the simple device of becoming the bank
of deposit of the controlled corporations, instead
of having the company deposit in some merely
controlled bank in whose operation others have
at least some share. When J. P. Morgan & Co.
buy an issue of securities the purchase money,
instead of being paid over to the corporation, is
retained by the banker for the corporation, to
be drawn upon only as the funds are needed by
the corporation. And as the securities are issued
in large blocks, and the money raised is often not
all spent until long thereafter, the aggregate of
the balances remaining in the banker's hands are
huge. Thus J. P. Morgan & Co. (including their
Philadelphia house, called Drexel & Co.) held
on November 1, 1912, deposits aggregating
$1G2,491,819.G5.

POWER AND PELF

The operations of so comprehensive a system
of concentration necessarily developed in the
bankers overweening j)()wor. And the bankers'
power grows by what it feeds on. Power begets

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 23

wealth; and added wealth opens ever new oppor-
tunities for the acquisition of wealth and power.
The operations of these bankers are so vast and
numerous that even a very reasonable compensa-
tion for the service performed by the bankers,
would, in the aggregate, produce for them in-
comes so large as to result in huge accumulations
of capital. But the compensation taken by the
bankers as commissions or profits is often far
from reasonable. Occupying, as they so fre-
quently do, !he inconsistent position of being at
the same tims seller and buyer, the standard for
so-called compensation actually applied, is not
the "Rule of reason", but ''All the traffic will
bear." And this is true even where there is no
sinister motive. The weakness of human nature
prevents men from being good judges of their
own deservings.

The syndicate formed by J. P. Morgan & Co.
to underwrite the United States Steel Corpora-
tion took for its services securities which netted
$62,500,000 in cash. Of this huge sum J. P.
Morgan & Co. received, as syndicate managers,
$12,500,000 in addition to the share which they
were entitled to receive as syndicate members.
This sum of $62,500,000 was only a part of the fees
paid for the service of monopolizing the steel in-

24 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

dustry. In addition to the commissions taken
specifically for organizing the United States
Steel Corporation, large sums were paid for
organizing the several companies of which it is
composed. For instance, the National Tube
Company was capitalized at $80,000,000 of
stock; $40,000,000 of which was common stock.
Half of this $40,000,000 was taken by J. P.
Morgan & Co. and their associates for promotion
services; and the $20,000,000 stock so taken
became later exchangeable for $25,000,000 of
Steel Common. Commissioner of Corporations
Herbert Knox Smith, found that:

"More than $150,000,000 of the stock of the
Steel Corporation was issued directly or in-
directly (tlirough exchange) for mere promo-
tion or underwriting services. In other words,
nearly one-seventh of the total capital stock
of the Steel Corporation appears to have been
issued directly or indirectly to promoters'
services."

The so-called fees and commissions taken by
the bankers and associates upon the organiza-
tion of the trusts have been exceptionally
large. But even after the trusts are successfully
launched the exactions of the bankers are often

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 25

extortionate. The syndicate which underwrote,
in 1901, the Steel Corporation's preferred stock
conversion plan, advanced only $20,000,000 in
cash and received an underwriting commission
of $6,800,000.

The exaction of huge commissions is not con-
fined to trust and other industrial concerns.
The Interborough Railway is a most prosperous
corporation. It earned last year nearly 21 per
cent, on its capital stock, and secured from New
York City, in connection with the subway ex-
tension, a very favorable contract. But when it
financed its $170,000,000 bond issue it was agreed
that J. P. Morgan & Co. should receive three
per cent., that is, $5,100,000, for merely forming
this syndicate. More recently, the New York,
New Haven & Hartford Railroad agreed to pay
J. P. Morgan & Co. a commission of $1,680,000;
that is, 2 1/2 per cent., to form a syndicate to
underwrite an issue at par of $67,000,000 20-
year 6 per cent, convertible debentures. That
means: The bankers bound themselves to take
at 97 1/2 any of these six per cent, convertible
bonds which stockholders might be unwilling to
buy at 100. When the contract was made the
New Haven's then outstanding six per cent, con-
vertible bonds were selling at 114. And the

26 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

new issue, as soon as announced, was in such
demand that the public offered and was for
months wilUng to buy at 106 bonds which the
Company were to pay J. P. Morgan & Co. $1,-
680,000 to be willing to take at par.

WHY THE BANKS BECAME INVESTMENT BANKERS

These large profits from promotions, under-
writings and security purchases led to a revolu-
tionary change in the conduct of our leading
banking institutions. It was obvious that con-
trol by the investment bankers of the deposits
in banks and trust companies was an essential
element in their securing these huge profits.
And the bank officers naturally asked, "Why
then should not the banks and trust companies
share in so profitable a field? Why should not
they themselves become investment bankers
too, with all the new functions incident to 'Big
Business'?" To do so would involve a de-
parture from the legitimate sphere of the
banking business, which is the making of tem-
porary loans to business concerns. But the
temptation was irresistible. The invasion of
the investment banker into the banks' field of
operation was followed by a counter invasion
by the banks into the realm of the investment

OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY 27

banker. Most prominent among the banks
were the National City and the First National
of New York. But theirs was not a hostile
invasion. The contending forces met as allies,
joined forces to control the business of the
country, and to "divide the spoils." The al-
liance was cemented by voting trusts, by inter-
locking directorates and by joint ownerships.
There resulted the fullest "cooperation"; and
ever more railroads, public service corporations,
and industrial concerns were brought into
complete subjection.

CHAPTER II
HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE

Among the allies, two New York banks —
the National City and the First National —
stand preeminent. They constitute, with the
]\Iorgan firm, the inner group of the Money
Trust. Each of the two banks, like J. P. Mor-
gan & Co., has huge resources. Each of the
two banks, like the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co.,
has been dominated by a genius in combination.
In the National Citj^ it is James Stillman; in
the First National, George F. Baker. Each of
these gentlemen was formerly President, and is
now Chairman of the Board of Directors. The
resources of the National City Bank (including
its Siamese-twin security company) are about
$300,000,000; those of the First National Bank
(including its Siamese-twin security company)
are about $200,000,000. The resources of the
Morgan firm have not been disclosed. But it
appears that they have available for their opera-
tions, also, huge deposits from their subjects;
deposits reported as $102,500,000.

28

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 29

The private fortunes of the chief actors in the
combination have not been ascertained. But
sporadic evidence indicates how great are the
possibiUties of accumulation when one has the
use of "other people's money." Mr. Morgan's
wealth became proverbial. Of Mr. Stillman's
many investments, only one was specifically
referred to, as he was in Europe during the
investigation, and did not testify. But that one
is significant. His 47,498 shares in the National
City Bank are worth about $18,000,000. Mr.
Jacob H. Schiff aptly described this as ''a very
nice investment."

Of Mr. Baker's investments we know more,
as he testified on many subjects. His 20,000
shares in the First National Bank are worth at
least $20,000,000. His stocks in six other New
York banks and trust companies are together
worth about $3,000,000. The scale of his in-
vestment in railroads may be inferred from his
former holdings in the Central Railroad of New
Jersey. JHe was its largest stockholder — so large
that with a few friends he held a majority of
the $27,436,800 par value of outstanding stock,
which the Reading bought at $160 a share.
He is a director in 28 other railroad companies;
and presumably a stockholder in, at least, as

30 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

many. The full extent of his fortune was not
inquired into, for that was not an issue in the
investigation. But it is not surprising that Mr.
Baker saw little need of new laws. When asked:

''You think everything is all right as it is
in this world, do you not?"

He answered:

"Pretty nearly."

RAMIFICATIONS OF POWER

But wealth expressed in figures gives a wholly
inadequate picture of the allies' power. Their
wealth is dynamic. It is wielded by geniuses
in combination. It finds its proper expression
in means of control. To comprehend the power
of the allies we must try to visualize the ramifi-
cations through which the forces operate.

Mr. Baker is a director in 22 corporations
having, with their many subsidiaries, aggregate
resources or capitalization of $7,272,000,000.
But the direct and visible power of the First
National Bank, which ]Mr. Baker dominates,
extends further. The Pujo report shows that
its directors (including Mr. Baker's son) arc
directors in at least 27 other corporations
with resources of $4,270,000,000. That is, the
First National is represented in 19 corporations,

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 31

with aggregate resources or capitalization of
$11,542,000,000.

It may help to an appreciation of the allies'
power to name a few of the more prominent
corporations in which, for instance, Mr. Baker's
influence is exerted — visibly and directly — as
voting trustee, executive committee man or
simple director.

1. Banks, Trust, and Life Insurance Companies:
First National Bank of New York; National
Bank of Commerce; Farmers' Loan and Trust
Company; Mutual Life Insurance Company.

2. Railroad [Companies: New York Central
Lines; New Haven, Reading, Erie, Lackawanna,
Lehigh Valley, Southern, Northern Pacific,
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy.

3. Public Service Corporations: American Tele-
graph & Telephone Company, Adams Express
Company.

4. Industrial Corporations: United States Steel
Corporation, Pullman Company.

Mr. Stillman is a director in only 7 corpora-
tions, with aggregate assets of $2,476,000,000;
but the directors in the National City Bank,
which he dominates, are directors in at least 41
other corporations which, with their subsidiaries,

32 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

have an aggregate capitalization or resources of
S10,564,000,000. The members of the firm of
J. P. ]M organ & Co., the acknowledged leader
of the allied forces, hold 72 directorships in 47
of the largest corporations of the country.

The Pujo Committee finds that the members
of J. P. Morgan & Co. and the directors of their
controlled trust companies and of the First
National and the National City Bank together
hold:

"One hundred and eighteen directorships in
34 banks and trust companies having total re-
sources of $2,679,000,000 and total deposits of
$1,983,000,000.

"Thirty duectorships in 10 insurance com-
panies having total assets of $2,293,000,000.

"One hundred and five directorships in 32
transportation systems having a total capitaliza-
tion of $11,784,000,000 and a total mileage (ex-
cluding express companies and steamship lines)
of 150,200.

"Sixty- three directorships in 24 producing
and trading corporations having a total capital-
ization of $3,330,000,000.

"Twenty-five directorships in 12 public-utility
corporations having a total capitalization of
$2,150,000,000.

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 33

''In all, 341 directorships in 112 corporations
having aggregate resources or capitalization of
$22,245,000,000."

TWENTY-TWO BILLION DOLLARS,

''Twenty- two billion dollars is a large sum —
so large that we have difficulty in grasping its
significance. The mind realizes size only through
comparisons. With what can we compare
twenty-two billions of dollars? Twenty-two bil-
lions of dollars is more than three times the as-
sessed value of all the property, real and personal,
in all New England. It is nearly three times the
assessed value of all the real estate in the City
of New York. It is more than twice the as-
sessed value of all the property in the thirteen
Southern states. It is more than the assessed
value of all the property in the twenty- two
states, north and south, lying west of the Miss-
issippi River.

But the huge sum of twenty-two bilHon dollars
is not large enough to include all the corporations
to which the "influence" of the three allies,
directly and visibly, extends, for

First: There are 56 other corporations (not
included in the Pujo schedule) each with capital
or resources of over $5,000,000, and aggregating

34 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

nearly $1,350,000,000, in which the ]\Iorgan allies
are represented according to the directories of
directors.

Second: The Pujo schedule does not include
any corporation with resources of less than
$5,000,000. But these financial giants have
shown their humility by becoming directors in
many such. For instance, members of J. P.
Morgan & Co., and directors in the National
City Bank and the First National Bank are also
directors in 158 such corporations. Available
publications disclose the capitalization of only
38 of these, but those 38 aggregate $78,669,375.

Third: The Pujo schedule includes only the
corporations in which the Morgan associates
actually appear by name as directors. It does
not include those in which they are represented
by dummies, or otherwise. For instance, the
Morgan influence certainly extends to the Kansas
City Terminal Railway Company, for which they
have marketed since 1910 (in connection with
others) four issues aggregating $41,761,000.
But no member of J. P. Morgan & Co., of the
National City Bank, or of the First National
Bank appears on the Kansas City Terminal
directorate.

Fourth: The Pujo schedule does not include

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 35

all the subsidiaries of the corporations scheduled.
For instance, the capitalization of the New-
Haven System is given as $385,000,000. That
sum represents the bond and stock capital of
the New Haven Railroad. But the New Haven
System comprises many controlled corporations
whose capitalization is only to a slight extent in-
cluded directly or indirectly in the New Haven
Railroad balance sheet. The New Haven, like
most large corporations, is a holding company
also; and a holding company may control sub-
sidiaries while owning but a small part of the
latters' outstanding securities. Only the small
part so held will be represented in the holding
company's balance sheet. Thus, while the New
Haven Railroad's capitalization is only $385-
000,000 — and that sum only appears in the Pujo
schedule — the capitalization of the New Haven
System, as shown by a chart submitted to the
Committee, is over twice as great; namely,
$849,000,000.

It is clear, therefore, that the $22,000,000,000,
referred to by the Pujo Committee, understates
the extent of concentration effected by the inner
group of the Money Trust.

S6 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

CEMENTING THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE

Care was taken by these builders of imperial
power that their structure should be enduring.
It has been buttressed on every side by joint
ownerships and mutual stockholdings, as well as
by close personal relationships; for directorships
are ephemeral and may end with a new election.
Mr. Morgan and his partners acquired one-
sixth of the stock of the First National Bank,
and made a S6, 000,000 investment in the stock
of the National City Bank. Then J. P. IMorgan
& Co., the National City, and the First National
(or their dominant officers — Mr. Stillman and
;Mr. Baker) acquired together, by stock purchases
and voting trusts, control of the National Bank
of Commerce, with its $190,000,000 of resources;
of the Chase National, with $125,000,000; of the
Guaranty Trust Company, with $232,000,000;
of the Bankers' Trust Company, with $205,000,-
000; and of a number of smaller, but important,
financial institutions. They became joint voting
trustees in great railroad systems; and finally
(as if the allies were united into a single concern)
loyal and efficient service in the banks — like that
rendered by Mr. Davison and Mr. Lamont in
the First National — was rewarded by promotion

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 37

to membership in the firm of J. P. Morgan
&Co.

THE PROVINCIAL ALLIES

Thus equipped and bound together, J. P.
Morgan & Co., the National City and the First
National easily dominated America's financial
center, New York; for certain other important
bankers, to be hereafter mentioned, were held
in restraint by "gentlemen's" agreements.
The three allies dominated Philadelphia too;
for the firm of Drexel & Co. is J. P. Morgan &
Co. under another name. But there are two
other important money centers in America,
Boston and Chicago.

In Boston there are two large international
banking houses — Lee, Higginson & Co., and
Kidder, Peabody & Co. — both long established
and rich; and each possessing an extensive,
wealthy clientele of eager investors in bonds and
stocks. Since 1907 each of these firms has pur-
chased or underwritten (principally in conjunc-
tion with other bankers) about 100 different
security issues of the greater interstate corpora-
tions, the issues of each banker amounting in
the aggregate to over $1,000,000,000. Concen-
tration of banking capital has proceeded even

38 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

further in Boston than in New York. By suc-
cessive consolidations the number of national
banks has been reduced from 58 in 1898 to 19
in 1913. There are in Boston now also 23 trust
companies.

The National Shawmut Bank, the First
National Bank of Boston and the Old Colony
Trust Co., which these two Boston banking
houses and their associates control, alone have
aggregate resources of $288,386,294, constituting
about one-half of the banking resources of the
city. These great banking institutions, which
are themselves the result of many consolidations,
and the 21 other banks and trust companies, in
which their directors are also directors, hold
together 90 per cent, of the total banking re-
sources of Boston. And linked to them by inter-
locking directorates are 9 other banks and trust
companies whose aggregate resources are about
2 1/2 per cent, of Boston's total. Thus of 42
banking institutions, 33, with aggregate resources
of 8560,516,239, holding about 92 1/2 per cent,
of the aggregate banking resources of Boston,
are interlocked. But even the remaining 9 banks
and trust companies, which together hold but
7 1/2 per cent, of Boston banking resources, are
not all independent of one another. Three

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 39

are linked together; so that there appear to be
only six banks in all Boston that are free from
interlocking directorate relations. They to-
gether represent but 5 per cent, of Boston's
banking resources. And it may well be doubted
whether all of even those 6 are entirely free from
affiliation with the other groups.

Boston's banking concentration is not limited
to the legal confines of the city. Around Boston
proper are over thirty suburbs, which with it
form what is popularly known as "Greater
Boston." These suburban municipalities, and
also other important cities like Worcester and
Springfield, are, in many respects, within Boston's
"sphere of influence." Boston's inner banking
group has interlocked, not only 33 of the 42
banks of Boston proper, as above shown, but has
linked with them, by interlocking directorships,
at least 42 other banks and trust companies in
35 other municipalities.

Once Lee, Higginson & Co. and Kidder, Pea-
body & Co. were active competitors. They are
so still in some small, or purely local matters;
but both are devoted co-operators with the
Morgan associates in larger and interstate trans-
actions; and the alliance with these great Boston
banking houses has been cemented by mutual

40 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

stockholdings and co-directorships. Financial
concentration seems to have found its highest ex-
pression in Boston.

Somewhat similar relations exist between the
triple alliance and Chicago's great financial insti-
tutions— its First National Bank, the Illinois
Trust and Savings Bank, and the Continental
& Commercial National Bank — which together
control resources of S561, 000,000. And similar
relations would doubtless be found to exist with
the leading bankers of the other important finan-
cial centers of America, as to which the Pujo
Committee was prevented by lack of time from
making investigation.

THE AUXILIARIES

Such are the primary, such the secondary
powers which comprise the IMoney Trust; but
these are supplemented by forces of magnitude.

"Radiating from these principal groups," says
the Pujo Committee, "and closely affiliated with
them are smaller but important banking houses,
such as Kissel, Kinnicut & Co., White, Weld
& Co., and Harvey Fisk & Sons, who receive
large and lucrative patronage from the dominat-
ing groups, and are used by the latter as jobbers
or distributors of securities, the issuing of which

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 41

they control, but which for reasons of their own
they prefer not to have issued or distributed
under their own names. Lee, Higginson & Co.,
besides being partners with the inner group, are
also frequently utilized in this service because of
their facilities as distributors of securities."

For instance, J. P. Morgan & Co. as fiscal
agents of the New Haven Railroad had the
right to market its securities and that of its sub-
sidiaries. Among the numerous New Haven
subsidiaries, is the New York, Westchester and
Boston — the road which cost $1,500,000 a mile
to build, and which earned a deficit last year
of nearly $1,500,000, besides failing to earn any
return upon the New Haven's own stock and
bond investment of $8,241,951. When the New
Haven concluded to market $17,200,000 of these
bonds, J. P. Morgan & Co., ''for reasons of their
own," ''preferred not to have these bonds issued
or distributed under their own name." The
Morgan firm took the bonds at 92 1/2 net; and
the bonds were marketed by Kissel, Kinnicut
& Co. and others at 96 1/4.

THE SATELLITES

The alliance is still further supplemented, as
the Pujo Committee shows:

42 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

''Beyond these inner groups and sub-groups are
banks and bankers throughout the country who
co-operate with them in underwriting or guaran-
teeing the sale of securities offered to the public,
and who also act as distributors of such securities.
It was impossible to learn the identity of these
corporations, owing to the unwillingness of the
members of the inner group to disclose the names
of their underwriters, but sufficient appears to
justify the statement that there are at least
hundreds of them and that they extend into
many of the cities throughout this and foreign
countries.

''The patronage thus proceeding from the
inner group and its sub-groups is of great value
to these banks and bankers, who are thus tied
by self-interest to the great issuing houses and
may be regarded as a part of this vast financial
organization. Such patronage yields no incon-
siderable part of the income of these banks and
bankers and without much risk on account of the
facilities of the principal groups for placing issues
of securities through their domination of great
banks and trust companies and their other do-
mestic afliliations and their foreign connections.
The underwriting commissions on issues made by
this inner group are usually easily earned and do

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 43

not ordinarily involve the underwriters in the
purchase of the underwritten securities. Their
interest in the transaction is generally adjusted
unless they choose to purchase part of the securi-
ties, by the payment to them of a commission.
There are, however, occasions on which this is
not the case. The underwriters are then re-
quired to take the securities. Bankers and
brokers are so anxious to be permitted to par-
ticipate in these transactions under the lead of
the inner group that as a rule they join when
invited to do so, regardless of their approval of
the particular business, lest by refusing they
should thereafter cease to be invited."

In other words, an invitation from these
royal bankers is interpreted as a command. As
a result, these great bankers frequently get huge
commissions without themselves distributing any
of the bonds, or ever having taken any actual
risk.

"In the case of the New York subway financ-
ing of $170,000,000 of bonds by Messrs. Morgan
& Co. and their associates, Mr. Davison [as the
Pujo Committee reports] estimated that there
were from 100 to 125 such underwriters who
were apparently glad to agree that Messrs,

U OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Morgan & Co., the First National Bank, and the
National City Bank should receive 3 per cent.,
— equal to $5,100,000 — for forming this syndi-
cate, thus relieving themselves from all liability,
whilst the underwriters assumed the risk of what
the bonds would realize and of being required to
take their share of the unsold portion."

THE PROTECTION OF PSEUDO-ETHICS

The organization of the ]\Ioney Trust is in-
tensive, the combination comprehensive; but
one other element was recognized as necessary
to render it stable, and to make its dynamic force
irresistible. Despotism, be it financial or politi-
cal, is vulnerable, unless it is believed to rest
upon a moral sanction. The longing for freedom
is ineradicable. It will express itself in protest
against servitude and inaction, unless the striv-
ing for freedom be made to seem immoral.
Long ago monarchs invented, as a preservative
of absolutism, the fiction of "The divine right of
kings." Bankers, imitating royalty, invented re-
cently that precious rule of so-called "Ethics," by
which it is declared unprofessional to come to the
financial relief of any corporation which is already
the prey of another "reputable" banker.

"The possibility of competition between these

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 45

banking houses in the purchase of securities,"
says the Pujo Committee, "is further removed
by the understanding between them and others,
that one will not seek, by offering better terms,
to take away from another, a customer which it
has theretofore served, and by corollary of this,
namely, that where given bankers have once
satisfactorily united in bringing out an issue of
a corporation, they shall also join in bringing
out any subsequent issue of the same corpora-
tions. This is described as a principle of banking
ethics."

The "Ethical" basis of the rule must be that
the interests of the combined bankers are
superior to the interests of the rest of the com-
munity. Their attitude reminds one of the
"spheres of influence" with ample " hinterlands "
by which rapacious nations are adjusting differ-
ences. Important banking concerns, too am-
bitious to be willing to take a subordinate position
in the alliance, and too powerful to be suppressed,
are accorded a financial "sphere of influence"
upon the understanding that the rule of banking
ethics will be faithfully observed. Most promi-
nent among such lesser potentates are Kuhn,
Loeb & Co., of New York, an international
banking house of great wealth, with large clientele

46 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

and connections. They are accorded an impor-
tant "sphere of influence" in American rail-
roading, including among other systems the
Baltimore & Ohio, the Union Pacific and the
Southern Pacific. They and the IMorgan group
have with few exceptions preempted the banking
business of the important railroads of the
country. But even Kuhn, Loeb & Co. are not
wholly independent. The Pujo Committee re-
ports that they are ''quaUfied aUies of the inner
group"; and through their "close relations with
the National City Bank and the National Bank
of Commerce and other financial institutions"
have "many interests in common with the
Morgan associates, conducting large joint-
account operations with them."

THE EVILS RESULTANT

First: These banker-barons levy, through
their excessive exactions, a heavy toll upon the
whole community; upon owners of money for
leave to invest it; upon railroads, public service
and industrial companies, for leave to use this
money of other people; and, through these
corporations, upon consumers.

"The charge of capital," says the Pujo Com-
mittee, "which of course enters universally into

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 47

the price of commodities and of service, is thus
in effect determined by agreement amongst those
supplying it and not under the check of competi-
tion. If there be any virtue in the principle of
competition, certainly any plan or arrangement
which prevents its operation in the performance
of so fundamental a commercial function as the
supplying of capital is peculiarly injurious."

Second: More serious, however, is the effect
of the Money Trust in directly suppressing com-
petition. That suppression enables the monopo-
list to extort excessive profits; but monopoly
increases the burden of the consumer even more
in other ways. Monopoly arrests development;
and through arresting development, prevents
that lessening of the cost of production and of
distribution which would otherwise take place.

Can full competition exist among the anthra-
cite coal railroads when the Morgan associates
are potent in all of them? And with like
conditions prevailing, what competition is to be
expected between the Northern Pacific and the
Great Northern, the Southern, the Louisville
and Nashville, and the Atlantic Coast Line; or
between the Westinghouse Manufacturing Com-
pany and the General Electric Company? As
the Pujo Committee finds:

48 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

"Such affiliations tend as a cover and conduit
for secret arrangements and understandings in
restriction of competition through the agency of
the banking house thus situated."

And under existing conditions of combina-
tion, reUef tlirough other banking houses is
precluded.

"It can hardly be expected that the banks,
trust companies, and other institutions that are
thus seeking participation from this inner group
would be likely to engage in business of a charac-
ter that would be displeasing to the latter or
would interfere with their plans or prestige.
And so the protection that can be afforded by the
members of the inner group constitutes the
safest refuge of our great industrial combinations
against future competition. The powerful grip
of these gentlemen is upon the throttle that
controls the wheels of credit, and upon their
signal those wheels will tm-n or stop."

TJiird: But far more serious even than the
suppression of competition is the suppression of
industrial liberty, indeed of manhood itself,
which this overweening financial power entails.
The intimidation which it effects extends far
beyond "the banks, trust companies, and other
institutions seeking participation from this inner

HOW THE COMBINERS COMBINE 49

group in their lucrative underwritings" ; and far
beyond those interested in the great corporations
directly dependent upon the inner group. Its
blighting and benumbing effect extends as well
to the small and seemingly independent business
man, to the vast army of professional men and
others directly dependent upon *'Big Business,"
and to many another; for

1. Nearly every enterprising business man
needs bank credit. The granting of credit in-
volves the exercise of judgment of the bank offi-
cials; and however honestly the bank officials may
wish to exercise their discretion, experience shows
that their judgment is warped by the existence
of the all-pervading power of the Money Trust.
He who openly opposes the great interests will
often be found to lack that quality of "safe
and sane"-ness which is the basis of financial
credit.

2. Nearly every enterprising business man and
a large part of our professional men have some-
thing to sell to, or must buy something from, the
great corporations to which the control or
influence of the money lords extends directly, or
from or to affiliated interests. Sometimes it is
merchandise; sometimes it is service; sometimes

50 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

they have nothing either to buy or to sell, but
desire political or social advancement. Some-
times they want merely peace. Experience shows
that "it is not healthy to buck against a locomo-
We," and ''Business is business."

Here and there you will find a hero, — red-
blooded, and courageous, — loving manhood more
than wealth, place or security, — who dared to
fight for independence and won. Here and there
you may find the mart}T, who resisted in silence
and suffered with resignation. But America,
which seeks "the greatest good of the greatest
number," cannot be content with conditions that
fit only the hero, the martyr or the slave.

CHAPTER III

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES

The practice of interlocking directorates is the
root of many evils. It offends laws human and
divine. Applied to rival corporations, it tends to
the suppression of competition and to violation of
the Sherman law. Applied to corporations which
deal with each other, it tends to disloyalty and to
violation of the fundamental law that no man can
serve two masters. In either event it tends to
inefficiency; for it removes incentive and destroys
soundness of judgment. It is undemocratic, for
it rejects the platform: ''A fair field and no
favors," — substituting the pull of privilege for the
push of manhood. It is the most potent instru-
ment of the Money Trust. Break the control so
exercised by the investment bankers over rail-
roads, public-service and industrial corporations,
over banks, life insurance and trust companies,
and a long step will have been taken toward
attainment of the New Freedom.

The term ''Interlocking directorates" is here
used in a broad sense as including all intertwined

51

52 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

conflicting interests, whatever the form, and by
whatever device effected. The objection extends
alike to contracts of a corporation whether with
one of its directors individually, or with a firm
of which he is a member, or with another corpora-
tion in which he is interested as an officer or
director or stockholder. The objection extends
likewise to men holding the inconsistent position
of director in two potentially competing corpora-
tions, even if those corporations do not actually
deal with each other.

THE ENDLESS CHAIN

A single example will illustrate the vicious circle
of control — the endless chain — through which our
financial oligarchy now operates:

J. P. Morgan (or a partner), a director of the
New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad,
causes that company to sell to J. P. IMorgan &
Co. an issue of bonds. J. P. Morgan & Co.
borrow the money with which to pay for the bonds
from the Guaranty Trust Company, of which
Mr. Morgan (or a partner) is a director. J. P.
Morgan & Co. sell the bonds to the Penn Mutual
Life Insurance Company, of which Mr. Morgan
(or a partner) is a director. The New Haven
spends the proceeds of the bonds in purchasing

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES 53

steel rails from the United States Steel Corpora-
tion, of which Mr. Morgan (or a partner) is a
director. The United States Steel Corporation
spends the proceeds of the rails in purchasing
electrical supplies from the General Electric
Company, of which Mr. Morgan (or a partner)
is a director. The General Electric sells supplies
to the Western Union Telegraph Company, a
subsidiary of the American Telephone and
Telegraph Company; and in both Mr. Morgan
(or a partner) is a director. The Telegraph
Company has an exclusive wire contract with the
Reading, of which Mr. Morgan (or a partner) is
a director. The Reading buys its passenger cars
from the Pullman Company, of which Mr.
Morgan (or a partner) is a director. The
Pullman Company buys (for local use) loco-
motives from the Baldwin Locomotive Company,
of which Mr. Morgan (or a partner) is a director.
The Reading, the General Electric, the Steel
Corporation and the New Haven, like the
Pullman, buy locomotives from the Baldwin
Company. The Steel Corporation, the Tele-
phone Company, the New Haven, the Reading,
the Pullman and the Baldwin Companies, like
the Western Union, buy electrical supplies from
the General Electric. The Baldwin, the Pull-

54 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

man, the Reading, the Telephone, the Telegraph
and the General Electric companies, like the
New Haven, buy steel products from the Steel
Corporation. Each and every one of the com-
panies last named markets its securities through
J. P. Morgan & Co.; each deposits its funds with
J. P. Morgan & Co.; and with these funds of
each, the firm enters upon further operations.

This specific illustration is in part suppositi-
tious; but it represents truthfully the operation of
interlocking directorates. Only it must be multi-
phed many times and with many permutations
to represent fully the extent to which the interests
of a few men are intertwined. Instead of taking
the New Haven as the railroad starting point in
our example, the New York Central, the Santa
F6, the Southern, the Lehigh Valley, the Chicago
and Great Western, the Erie or the P6re Mar-
quette might have been selected; instead of the
Guaranty Trust Company as the banking reser-
voir, any one of a dozen other important banks or
trust companies; instead of the Penn Mutual as
piu-chaser of the bonds, other insurance compa-
nies; instead of the General Electric, its qualified
competitor, the Westinghouse Electric and Manu-
facturing Company. The chain is indeed end-

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES 55

less; for each controlled corporation is entwined
with many others.

As the nexus of "Big Business" the Steel
Corporation stands, of course, preeminent. The
Stanley Committee showed that the few men who
control the Steel Corporation, itself an owner of
important railroads, are directors also in twenty-
nine other railroad systems, with 126,000 miles
of hne (more than half the railroad mileage of the
United States), and in important steamship
companies. Through all these alliances and the
huge traffic it controls, the Steel Corporation's
influence pervades railroad and steamship com-
panies— not as carriers only — but as the largest
customers for steel. And its influence with
users of steel extends much further. These same
few men are also directors in twelve steel-using
street railway systems, including some of the
largest in the world. They are directors in forty
machinery and similar steel-using manufacturing
companies; in many gas, oil and water com-
panies, extensive users of iron products; and
in the great wire-using telephone and telegraph
companies. The aggregate assets of these differ-
ent corporations — through which these few men
exert their influence over the business of the
United States — exceeds sixteen billion dollars.

56 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Obviously, interlocking directorates, and all
that term implies, must be effectually prohibited
before the freedom of American business can be
regained. The prohibition will not be an in-
novation. It will merely give full legal sanction
to the fundamental law of morals and of human
nature: that "No man can serve two masters."
The surprising fact is that a principle of equity so
firmly rooted should have been departed from at
all in deahng with corporations. For no rule
of law has, in other connections, been more rigor-
ously appUed, than that which prohibits a trustee
from occupying inconsistent positions, from deal-
ing with himself, or from using his fiduciary
position for personal profit. And a director of a
corporation is as obviously a trustee as persons
holding similar positions in an unincorporated
association, or in a private trust estate, who are
called specifically by that name. The Courts
have recognized this fully.

Thus, the Court of Appeals of New York de-
clared in an important case:

"While not technically trustees, for the title
of the corporate property was in the corporation
itself, they were charged with the duties and
subject to the liabilities of trustees. Clothed

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES 57

with the power of controlling the property and
managing the affairs of the corporation without
let or hindrance, as to third persons, they were its
agents; but as to the corporation itself equity
holds them liable as trustees. While courts of
law generally treat the directors as agents, courts
of equity treat them as trustees, and hold them
to a strict account for any breach of the trust
relation. For all practical purposes they are
trustees, when called upor in equity to account
for their official conduct."

NULLIFYING THE LAW

But this wholesome rule of business, so clearly
laid down, was practically nullified by courts
in creating two unfortunate limitations, as
concessions doubtless to the supposed needs of
commerce.

First: Courts held valid contracts between a
corporation and a director, or between two
corporations with a common director, where it
was shown that in making the contract, the cor-
poration was represented by independent direct-
ors and that the vote of the interested director
was unnecessary to carry the motion and his pres-
ence was not needed to constitute a quorum.

Second: Courts held that even where a com-

58 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

mon director participated actively in the making
of a contract between two corporations, the
contract was not absolutely void, but voidable
only at the election of the corporation.

The first limitation ignored the rule of law that
a beneficiary is entitled to disinterested advice
from all liis trustees, and not merely from some;
and that a trustee may violate his trust by in-
action as well as by action. It ignored, also, the
laws of human nature, in assuming that the in-
fluence of a director is confined to the act of
voting. Every one knows that the most effective
work is done before any vote is taken, subtly,
and without provable participation. Every one
should know that the denial of minority repre-
sentation on boards of directors has resulted in
the domination of most corporations by one or
two men; and in practically banishing all criti-
cism of the dominant power. And even where
the board is not so dominated, there is too often
that "harmonious cooperation" among directors
which secures for each, in his own line, a due share
of the corporation's favors.

The second limitation — by which contracts,
in the making of which the interested director
participates actively, are held merely voidable
instead of absolutely void — ignores the teachings

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES 59

of experience. To hold such contracts merely
voidable has resulted practically in declaring
them valid. It is the directors who control
corporate action; and there is little reason to
expect that any contract, entered into by a
board with a fellow director, however unfair,
would be subsequently avoided. Appeals from
Philip drunk to Philip sober are not of frequent
occurrence, nor very fruitful. But here we lack
even an appealing party. Directors and the
dominant stockholders would, of course, not
appeal; and the minority stockholders have
rarely the knowledge of facts which is essential
to an effective appeal, whether it be made to
the directors, to the whole body of stockholders,
or to the courts. Besides, the financial burden
and the risks incident to any attempt of individual
stockholders to interfere with an existing manage-
ment is ordinarily prohibitive. Proceedings to
avoid contracts with directors are, therefore, sel-
dom brought, except after a radical change in the
membership of the board. And radical changes
in a board's membership are rare. Indeed the
Pujo Committee reports:

"None of the witnesses (the leading American
bankers testified) was able to name an instance in

60 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

the history of the country in which the stock-
holders had succeeded in overthi'owing an exist-
ing management in any large corporation. Nor
does it appear that stockholders have ever even
succeeded in so far as to secure the investigation
of an existing management of a corporation to
ascertain whether it has been well or honestly
managed."

Air. Max Pam proposed in the April, 1913,
Harvard Law Review, that the government come
to the aid of minority stockholders. He urged
that the president of every corporation be re-
quired to report annuallj^ to the stockholders, and
to state and federal officials every contract made
by the company in which any director is inter-
ested; that the Attorney-General of the United
States or the State investigate the same and take
proper proceedings to set all such contracts
aside and recover any damages sufTered; or
without disaffirming the contracts to recover
(rom the interested directors the profits derived
iherefrom. And to this end also, that State and
National Bank Examiners, State Superintend-
ents of Insurance, and the Interstate Commerce
Commission be directed to examine the records
of every bank, trust company, insurance com-

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES Gl

pany, railroad company and every other corporar
tion engaged in interstate commerce. Mr. Pam's
views concerning interlocking directorates are
entitled to careful study. As counsel promi-
nently identified with the organization of trusts,
he had for years full opportunity of weighing the
advantages and disadvantages of ''Big Business."
His conviction that the practice of interlocking
directorates is a menace to the public and demands
drastic legislation, is significant. And much can
be said in support of the specific measure which
he proposes. But to be effective, the remedy
must be fundamental and comprehensive.

THE ESSENTIALS OF PROTECTION

Protection to minority stockholders demands
that corporations be prohibited absolutely from
making contracts in which a director has a
private interest, and that all such contracts be
declared not voidable merely, but absolutely
void.

In the case of railroads and public-service
corporations (in contradistinction to private
industrial companies), such prohibition is de-
manded, also, in the interests of the general
public. For interlocking interests breed in-
efficiency and disloyalty; and the public pays,

62 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

in higher rates or in poor service, a large part of
the penalty for graft and inefficiency. Indeed,
whether rates are adequate or excessive cannot
be determined until it is known whether the
gross earnings of the corporation are properly
expended. For when a company's important
contracts are made through directors who are
interested on both sides, the common presump-
tion that money spent has been properly spent
does not prevail. And this is particularly true
in railroading, where the company so often lacks
effective competition in its own field.

But the compelling reason for prohibiting
interlocking directorates is neither the protection
of stockholders, nor the protection of the public
from the incidents of inefficiency and graft.
Conclusive evidence (if obtainable) that the
practice of interlocking directorates benefited all
stockholders and was the most efficient form of
organization, would not remove the objections.
For even more important than efficiency are in-
dustrial and political liberty; and these are
imperiled by the Money Trust. Interlocking
directorates must he prohibited, because it is impos-
sible to break the Money Trust without putting an
end to the practice in the larger corporations.

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES 63

BANKS AS PUBLIC-SERVICE CORPORATIONS

The practice of interlocking directorates is
peculiarly objectionable when applied to banks,
because of the nature and functions of those
institutions. Bank deposits are an important
part of our currency sy^em. They are almost
as essential a factor in commerce as our railways.
Receiving deposits and making loans therefrom
should be treated by the law not as a private
business, but as one of the public services. And
recognizing it to be such, the law already regu-
lates it in many ways. The function of a bank
is to receive and to loan money. It has no more
right than a common carrier to use its powers
specifically to build up or to destroy other
businesses. The granting or withholding of a
loan should be determined, so far as concerns the
borrower, solely by the interest rate and the risk
involved; and not by favoritism or other con-
siderations foreign to the banking function.
Men may safely be allowed to grant or to deny
loans of their own money to whomsoever they
see fit, whatsoever their motive may be. But
bank resources are, in the main, not owned by the
stockholders nor by the directors. Nearly three-
fourths of the aggregate resources of the thirty-

64 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

four banking institutions in which the Morgan
associates hold a predominant influence are rep-
resented by deposits. The dependence of com-
merce and industry upon bank deposits, as the
common reservoir of quick capital is so complete,
that deposit banking should be recognized as
one of the businesses "affected with a public
interest." And the general rule which forbids
public-service corporations from making unjust
discriminations or giving undue preference should
be applied to the operations of such banks.

Senator Owen, Chairman of the Committee
on Banking and Currency, said recently:

"My own judgment is that a bank is a public-
utility institution and cannot be treated as a
private affair, for the simple reason that the
public is invited, under the safeguards of the
government, to deposit its money with the bank,
and the public has a right to have its interests
safeguarded through organized authorities. The
logic of this is beyond escape. All banks in the
United States, public and private, should be
treated as public-utility institutions, where they
receive public deposits."

The directors and officers of banking institu-
tions must, of course, be entrusted with wide

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES 65

discretion in the granting or denying of loans.
But that discretion should be exercised, not only
honestly as it affects stockholders, but also
impartially as it affects the public. Mere
honesty to the stockholders demands that the
interests to be considered by the directors be
the interests of all the stockholders; not the profit
of the part of them who happen to be its direct-
ors. But the general welfare demands of the
director, as trustee for the public, performance of
a stricter duty. The fact that the granting of
loans involves a delicate exercise of discretion
makes it difficult to determine whether the rule
of equahty of treatment, which every public-
service corporation owes, has been performed.
But that difficulty merely emphasizes the im-
portance of making absolute the rule that banks
of deposit shall not make any loan nor engage in
any transaction in which a director has a private
interest. And we should bear this in mind:
If privately- owned banks fail in the public
duty to afford borrowers equality of opportunity,
there will arise a demand for government-owned
banks, which will become irresistible.

The statement of Mr. Justice Holmes of the
Supreme Court of the United States, in the
Oklahoma Bank case, is significant:

66 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

''We cannot say that the public interests to
which we have adverted, and others, are not
sufficient to warrant the State in taking the whole
business of banking under its control. On the
contrary we are of opinion that it may go on from
regulation to prohibition except upon such con-
ditions as it may prescribe."

OFFICIAL PRECEDENTS

Nor would the requirement that banks shall
make no loan in which a director has a private
interest impose undue hardships or restrictions
upon bank du'ectors. It might make a bank
director dispose of some of his investments and
refrain from making others; but it often happens
that the holding of one office precludes a man
from holding another, or compels him to dispose
of certain financial interests.

A judge is disqualified from sitting in any
case in which he has even the smallest financial
interest; and most judges, in order to be free to
act in any matters arising in their court, proceed,
upon taking office, to dispose of all investments
which could conceivably bias their judgment
in any matter that might come before them. An
Interstate Commerce Commissioner is prohibited
from owning any bonds or stocks in any corpora-

INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES 67

tion subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission.
It is a serious criminal offence for any executive
officer of the federal government to transact
government business with any corporation in the
pecuniary profits of which he is directly or
indirectly interested.

And the directors of our great banking in-
stitutions, as the ultimate judges of bank credit,
exercise today a function no less important to the
country's welfare than that of the judges of our
courts, the interstate commerce commissioners,
and departmental heads.

SCOPE OF THE PROHIBITION

In the proposals for legislation on this subject,
four important questions are presented:

1. Shall the principle of prohibiting inter-
locking directorates in potentially competing
corporations be applied to state banking insti-
tutions, as well as the national banks?

2. Shall it be applied to all kinds of corpora-
tions or only to banking institutions?

3. Shall the principle of prohibiting corpora-
tions from entering into transactions in which the
management has a private interest be applied to
both directors and officers or be confined in its
application to officers only?

68 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

4. Shall the principle be applied so as to
prohibit transactions with another corporation in
which one of its directors is interested merely as
a stockholder?

i

CHAPTER IV

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY

The Pujo Committee has presented the
facts concerning the Money Trust so clearly
that the conclusions appear inevitable. Their
diagnosis discloses intense financial concentra-
tion and the means by which it is effected.
Combination, — the intertwining of interests, —
is shown to be the all-pervading vice of the
present system. With a view to freeing in-
dustry, the Committee recommends the enact-
ment of twenty-one specific remedial provisions.
Most of these measures are wisely framed to
meet some abuse disclosed by the evidence; and
if all of these were adopted the Pujo legislation
would undoubtedly alleviate present suffering
and aid in arresting the disease. But many of
the remedies proposed are ''local" ones; and a
cure is not possible, without treatment which is
fundamental. Indeed, a major operation is
necessary. This the Committee has hesitated
to advise; although the fundamental treatment
required is simple: "Serve one Master only."

70 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

The evils incident to interlocking dii-ector-
ates are, of course, fully recognized; but the
prohibitions proposed in that respect ai*e re-
stricted to a very narrow sphere.

First: The Committee recognizes that po-
tentially competing corporations should not
have a common director; — but it restricts this
prohibition to directors of national banks,
saying:

"No ofRcer or director of a national bank
shall be an officer or director of any other bank
or of any trust company or other financial or
other corporation or institution, whether or-
ganized under state or federal law, that is author-
ized to receive money on deposit or that is engaged
in the business of loaning money on collateral or
in buying and selling securities except as in this
section provided; and no person shall be an
officer or director of any national bank who is
a private banker or a member of a firm or partner-
ship of bankers that is engaged in the business of
receiving deposits: Provided, That such bank,
trust company, financial institution, banker, or
firm of bankers is located at or engaged in busi-
ness at or in the same city, town, or village as
that in which such national bank is located or
engaged in business: Provided further. That a

I

SER\1E ONE MASTER ONLY 71

director of a national bank or a partner of
such director may be an officer or director of
not more than one trust company organized
by the laws of the state in which such national
bank is engaged in business and doing business
at the same place."

Second: The Committee recognizes that a
corporation should not make a contract in which
one of the management has a private interest;
but it restricts this prohibition (1) to national
banks, and (2) to the officers, saying:

*'No national bank shall lend or advance
money or credit or purchase or discount any
promissory note, draft, bill of exchange or other
evidence of debt bearing the signature or in-
dorsement of any of its officers or of any partner-
ship of which such officer is a member, directly
or indirectly, or of any corporation in which
such officer owns or has a beneficial interest
of upward of ten per centum of the capital
stock, or lend or advance money or credit to,
for or on behalf of any such officer or of any such
partnership or corporation, or purchase any se-
curity from any such officer or of or from any
partnership or corporation of which such officer
is a member or in which he is financially inter-
ested, as herein specified, or of any corporation

■i'Z

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

of which any of its officers is an officer at the
time of such transaction."

Prohibitions of intertwining relations so re-
stricted, however supplemented by other pro-
visions, will not end financial concentration.
The Money Trust snake will, at most, be
scotched, not killed. The prohibition of a
common director in potentially competing cor-
porations should apply to state banks and trust
companies, as well as to national banks; and
it should apply to railroad and industrial cor-
porations as fully as to banking institutions.
The prohibition of corporate contracts in which
one of the management has a private interest
should apply to du-ectors, as well as to officers,
and to state banks and trust companies and
to other classes of corporations, as well as to
national banks. And, as will be hereafter shown,
such broad legislation is within the power of
Congress.

Let us examine this further:

THE PROHIBITION OF COMMON DIRECTORS IN PO-
TENTIALLY COMPETING CORPORATIONS

1. National Baiiks. The objection to com-
mon directors, as applied to banking institutions,
is clearly shown by the Pujo Committee.

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 73

''As the first and foremost step in applying a
remedy, and also for reasons that seem to us
conclusive, independently of that consideration,
we recommend that interlocking directorates
in potentially competing financial institutions
be abolished and prohibited so far as lies in
the power of Congress to bring about that re-
sult. . . . When we find, as in a number
of instances, the same man a director in half a
dozen or more banks and trust companies all
located in the same section of the same city,
doing the same class of business and with a like
set of associates similarly situated, all belong-
ing to the same group and representing the
same class of interests, all further pretense
of competition is useless. ... If banks
serving the same field are to be permitted
to have common directors, genuine competition
will be rendered impossible. Besides, this prac-
tice gives to such common directors the un-
fair advantage of knowing the affairs of bor-
rowers in various banks, and thus affords
endless opportunities for oppression."

This recommendation is in accordance with
the legislation or practice of other countries.
The Bank of England, the Bank of France, the
National Bank of Belgium, and the leading

74 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

banks of Scotland all exclude from their boards
persons who are du'ectors in other banks. By
law, in Russia no person is allowed to be on the
board of management of more than one bank.

The Committee's recommendation is also in
harmony with laws enacted by the Common-
wealth of Massachusetts more than a genera-
tion ago designed to curb financial concentra-
tion through the savings banks. Of the great
wealth of ^Massachusetts a large part is repre-
sented by deposits in its savings banks. These
deposits are distributed among 194 different
banks, located in 131 different cities and towns.
These 194 banks are separate and distinct; not
only in form, but in fact. In order that the
banks may not be controlled by a few financiers,
the Massachusetts law provides that no execu-
tive oflScer or trustee (director) of any savings
bank can hold any office in any other savings
bank. That statute was passed in 1876. A few
years ago it was supplemented by providing that
none of the executive officers of a savings bank
could hold a similar office in any national bank.
Massachusetts attempted thus to curb the power
of the individual financier; and no disadvantages
are discernible. When that Act was passed the
aggregate deposits in its savings banks were

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 75

$243,340,642; the number of deposit accounts
739,289; the average deposit to each person of
the population $144. On November 1, 1912,
the aggregate deposits were $838,635,097.85;
the number of deposit accounts 2,200,917; the
average deposit to each account $381.04. Mas-
sachusetts has shown that curbing the power of
the few, at least in this respect, is entirely-
consistent with efficiency and with the prosperity
of the whole people.

2. State Banks and Trust Companies. The
reason for prohibiting common directors in
banking institutions applies equally to national
banks and to state banks including those trust
companies which are essentially banks. In New
York City there are 37 trust companies of which
only 15 are members of the clearing house; but
those 15 had on November 2, 1912, aggregate
resources of $827,875,653. Indeed the Bankers'
Trust Company with resources of $205,000,000,
and the Guaranty Trust Company, with re-
sources of $232,000,000, are among the most
useful tools of the Money Trust. No bank in
the country has larger deposits than the latter;
and only one bank larger deposits than the
former. If common directorships were permitted
in state banks or such trust companies, the

76 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

charters of leading national banks would doubt-
less soon be surrendered; and the institutions
would elude federal control by re-incorporating
under state laws.

The Pujo Committee has failed to apply the
prohibition of common directorships in po-
tentially competing banking institutions rigor-
ously even to national banks. It permits the
same man to be a director in one national bank
and one trust company doing business in the
same place. The proposed concession opens the
door to grave dangers. In the first place the
provision would permit the interlocking of any
national bank not with one trust company only,
but with as many trust companies as the bank
has du'ectors. For while under the Pujo bill no
one can be a national bank director who is di-
rector in more than one such trust company,
there is nothing to prevent each of the directors
of a bank from becoming a director in a differ-
ent trust company. The National Bank of Com-
merce of New York has a board of 38 directors.
There are 37 trust companies in the City of New
York. Thirty-seven of the 38 directors might
each become a director of a different New York
trust company: and thus 37 trust companies
would be interlocked with the National Bank of

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 77

Commerce, unless the other recommendation of
the Pujo Committee limiting the number of
directors to 13 were also adopted.

But even if the bill were amended so as to
limit the possible interlocking of a bank to a
single trust company, the wisdom of the conces-
sion would still be doubtful. It is true, as the
Pujo Committee states, that ''the business that
may be transacted by" a trust company is of "a,
different character" from that properly trans-
acted by a national bank. But the business
actually conducted by a trust company is, at
least in the East, quite similar; and the two
classes of banking institutions have these vital
elements in common: each is a bank of deposit,
and each makes loans from its deposits. A
private banker may also transact some business
of a character different from that properly con-
ducted by a bank; but by the terms of the
Committee's bill a private banker engaged in
the business of receiving deposits would be
prevented from being a director of a national
bank; and the reasons underlying that prohi-
bition apply equally to trust companies and to
private bankers.

3. Other Corporations. The interlocking of
banking institutions is only one of the factors

78 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

which have developed the Money Trust. The
interlocking of other corporations has been an
equally important element. And the prohibi-
tion of interlocking directorates should be ex-
tended to potentially competing corporations
whatever the class; to life insurance companies,
railroads and industrial companies, as well as
banking institutions. The Pujo Committee has
shown that Mr. George F. Baker is a common
director in the six railroads which haul 80 per
cent, of all anthracite marketed and own 88
per cent, of all anthracite deposits. The Mor-
gan associates are the nexus between such sup-
posedly competing railroads as the Northern
Pacific and the Great Northern; the Southern,
the Louisville & Nashville and the Atlantic
Coast Line, and between partially competing
industrials like the Wcstinghouse Electric and
IManufacturing Company and the General Elec-
tric. The ?iexus between all the large poten-
tially competing corporations must be severed,
if the Money Trust is to be broken.

PROHIBITING CORPORATE CONTRACTS IN WHICH THE
MANAGEMENT HAS A PRIVATE INTEREST

The principle of prohibiting corporate contracts
in which the management has a private interest

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 79

is applied, in the Pujo Committee's recom-
mendations, only to national banks, and in them
only to officers. All other corporations are to be
permitted to continue the practice; and even in
national banks the directors are to be free to
have a conflicting private interest, except that
they must not accept compensation for promoting
a loan of bank funds nor participate in syndicates,
promotions or underwriting of securities in which
their banks may be interested as underwriters or
owners or lenders thereon: that all loans or other
transactions in which a director is interested shall
be made in his own name; and shall be authorized
only after ample notice to co-directors; and that
the facts shall be spread upon the records of the
corporation.

The Money Trust would not be disturbed by a
prohibition limited to officers. Under a law of
that character, financial control would continue
to be exercised by the few without substantial
impairment; but the power would be exerted
through a somewhat different channel. Bank
officers are appointees of the directors; and
ordinarily their obedient servants. Individuals
who, as bank officers, are now important factors
in the financial concentration, would doubtless
resign as officers and become merely directors.

80 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

The loss of official salaries involved could be
easily compensated. No member of the firm of
J. P. Morgan & Co. is an officer in any one of
the thirteen banking institutions with aggregate
resources of S1,2S3,000,000, through which as
directors they carry on their vast operations. A
prohibition limited to officers would not affect the
Morgan operations with these banking institu-
tions. If there were minority representation on
bank boards (which the Pujo Committee wisely
advocates), such a provision might afford some
protection to stockholders through the vigilance
of the minority directors preventing the dominant
directors using their power to the injury of the
minority stockholders. But even then, the pro-
vision would not safeguard the public; and the
primary purpose of Money Trust legislation is
not to prevent directors from injuring stockhold-
ers; but to prevent their injuring the pubhc
through the intertwined control of the banks.
No prohibition limited to officers will materially
change this condition.

The prohibition of interlocking directorates,
even if applied only to all banks and trust com-
panies, would practically compel the Morgan
representatives to resign from the directorates of
the thirteen l)anking institutions with which they

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 81

are connected, or from the directorates of all the
railroads, express, steamship, public utility, manu-
facturing, and other corporations which do busi-
ness with those banks and trust companies.
Whether they resigned from the one or the other
class of corporations, the endless chain would be
broken into many pieces. And whether they re-
tired or not, the Morgan power would obviously be
greatly lessened: for if they did not retire, their
field of operations would be greatly narrowed.

APPLY THE PRIVATE INTEREST PROHIBITION TO ALL
KINDS OF CORPORATIONS

The creation of the Money Trust is due quite
as much to the encroachment of the investment
banker upon railroads, public service, industrial,
and life-insurance companies, as to his control of
banks and trust companies. Before the Money
Trust can be broken, all these relations must be
severed. And they cannot be severed unless
corporations of each of these several classes are
prevented from dealing with their own directors
and with corporations in which those directors
are interested. For instance: The most potent
single source of J. P. Morgan & Co.'s power is
the $162,500,000 deposits, including those of 78
interstate railroad, public-service and industrial

82 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

corporations, which the Morgan firm is free to
use as it sees fit. The proposed proliibition, even
if applied to all banking institutions, would not
afifect directly this great source of Morgan power.
If, however, the prohibition is made to include
railroad, public-service, and industrial corpora-
tions, as well as banking institutions, members of
J. P. IVIorgan & Co. will quickly retire from
substantially all boards of directors.

APPLY THE PRIVATE INTEREST PROHIBITION TO
STOCKHOLDING INTERESTS

The prohibition against one corporation enter-
ing into transactions with another corporation in
which one of its directors is also interested,
should apply even if his interest in the second
corporation is merely that of stockholder. A
conflict of interests in a director may be just
as serious where he is a stockholder only in
the second corporation, as if he were also a
director.

One of the annoying petty monopolies, con-
cerning which evidence was taken by the Pujo
Committee, is the exclusive privilege granted to
the American Bank Note Company by the New
York 8tock Exchange. A recent $60,000,000
issue of New York City bonds was denied listing

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 83

on the Exchange, because the city refused to
submit to an exaction of $55,800 by the Ameri-
can Company for engraving the bonds, when the
New York Bank Note Company would do the
work equally well for $44,500. As tending to
explain this extraordinary monopoly, it was
shown that men prominent in the financial world
were stockholders in the American Company.
Among the largest stockholders was Mr. Morgan,
with 6,000 shares. No member of the Morgan
firm was a director of the American Company;
but there was sufficient influence exerted some-
how to give the American Company the stock
exchange monopoly.

The Pujo Committee, while failing to recom-
mend that transactions in which a director has a
private interest be prohibited, recognizes that a
stockholder's interest of more than a certain size
may be as potent an instrument of influence
as a direct personal interest; for it recommends
that:

"Borrowings, directly or indirectly by . . .
any corporation of the stock of which he (a bank
director) holds upwards of 10 per cent, from the
bank of which he is such director, should only be
permitted, on condition that notice shall have

84 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

been given to his co-directors and that a full
statement of the transaction shall be entered
upon the minutes of the meeting at which such
loan was authorized."

As shown above, the particular provision for
notice affords no protection to the public; but
if it did, its application ought to be extended
to lesser stock-holdings. Indeed it is difficult to
fix a limit so low that financial interest will not
influence action. Certainly a stockholding in-
terest of a single director, much smaller than 10
per cent., might be most effective in inducing
favors. IVIr. Morgan's stockholdings in the
American Bank Note Company was only three
per cent. The $6,000,000 investment of J. P.
Morgan & Co. in the National City Bank repre-
sented only 6 per cent, of the bank's stock;
and would undoubtedly have been effective,
even if it had not been supplemented by the
election of his son to the board of directors.

SPECIAL DISQUALIFICATIONS

The Stanley Committee, after investigation of
the Steel Trust, concluded that the evils of inter-
locking directorates were so serious that repre-
sentatives of certain industries which arc largely

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 85

dependent upon railroads should be absolutely
prohibited from serving as railroad directors,
officers or employees. It, therefore, proposed to
disqualify as railroad director, officer or employee
any person engaged in the business of manufactur-
ing or selling railroad cars or locomotives, railroad
rail or structural steel, or in mining and selling
coal. The drastic Stanley bill, shows how great
is the desire to do away with present abuses and
to lessen the power of the Money Trust.

Directors, officers, and employees of banking
institutions should, by a similar provision, be
disqualified from acting as directors, officers or
employees of life-insurance companies. The
Armstrong investigation showed that life-in-
surance companies were in 1905 the most potent
factor in financial concentration. Their power
was exercised largely through the banks and
trust companies which they controlled by stock
ownership and their huge deposits. The Arm-
strong legislation directed life-insurance com-
panies to sell their stocks. The Mutual Life and
the Equitable did so in part. But the Morgan
associates bought the stocks. And now, instead
of the life-insurance companies controlling the
banks and trust companies, the latter and the
bankers control the life-insurance companies.

86 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

HOW THE PROHIBITION MAT BE LIMITED

The Money Trust cannot be destroyed unless
all classes of corporations are included in the
prohibition of interlocking directors and of
transactions by corporations in which the man-
agement has a private interest. But it does not
follow that the prohibition must apply to every
corporation of each class. Certain exceptions
are entirely consistent with merely protecting the
public against the Money Trust; although pro-
tection of minority stockholders and business
ethics demand that the rule prohibiting a cor-
poration from making contracts in which a di-
rector has a private financial interest should be
universal in its application. The number of
corporations in the United States Dec. 31, 1912,
was 305,336. Of these only 1610 have a capi-
tal of more than $5,000,000. Few corporations
(other than banks) with a capital of less than
$5,000,000 could appreciably affect general credit
conditions either through their own operations
or their affiliations. Corporations (other than
banks) with capital resources of less than $5,000,-
000 might, therefore, be excluded from the scope
of the statute for the present. The prohibition
could also be limited so as not to apply to any

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 87

industrial concern, regardless of the amount of
capital and resources, doing only an intrastate
business; as practically all large industrial cor-
porations are engaged in interstate commerce.
This would exclude some retail concerns and
local jobbers and manufacturers not otherwise
excluded from the operation of the act. Like-
wise banks and trust companies located in cities
of less than 100,000 inhabitants might, if thought
advisable, be excluded, for the present if their
capital is less than S500,000, and their resources
less than, say, $2,500,000. In larger cities even
the smaller banking institutions should be sub-
ject to the law. Such exceptions should over-
come any objection which might be raised that
in some smaller cities, the prohibition of inter-
locking directorates would exclude from the
bank directorates all the able business men of
the community through fear of losing the oppor-
tunity of bank accommodations.

An exception should also be made, so as to
permit interlocking directorates between a cor-
poration and its proper subsidiaries. And the
prohibition of transactions in which the manage-
ment has a private interest should, of course, not
apply to contracts, express or implied, for such
services as are performed indiscriminately for

88 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

the whole community by raih-oads and public
service corporations, or for services, common to
all customers, like the ordinary service of a bank
for its depositors.

THE POWER OF CONGRESS

The question may be asked: Has Congress
the power to impose these limitations upon the
conduct of any business other than national
banks? And if the power of Congress is so lim-
ited, will not the dominant financiers, upon the
enactment of such a law, convert their national
banks into state banks or trust companies, and
thus escape from congressional control?

The answer to both questions is clear. Con-
gress has ample power to impose such prohibitions
upon practically all corporations, including state
banks, trust companies and life insurance com-
panies; and evasion may be made impossible.
While Congress has not been granted power to
regulate directly state banks, and trust or life
insurance companies, or railroad, public-service
and industrial corporations, except in respect to
interstate commerce, it may do so indirectly
by virtue either of its control of the mail privilege
or through the taxing power.

Practically no business in the United States can

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 89

be conducted without use of the mails; and Con-
gress may in its reasonable discretion deny the
use of the mail to any business which is con-
ducted under conditions deemed by Congress
to be injurious to the public welfare. Thus,
Congress has no power directly to suppress lot-
teries ; but it has indirectly suppressed them by
denying, under heavy penalty, the use of the
mail to lottery enterprises. Congress has no
power to suppress directly business frauds; but
it is constantly doing so indirectly by issuing
fraud-orders denying the mail privilege. Con-
gress has no direct power to require a newspaper
to publish a list of its proprietors and the amount
of its circulation, or to require it to mark paid-
matter distinctly as advertising: But it has thus
regulated the press, by denying the second-class
mail privilege, to all publications which fail to
comply with the requirements prescribed.

The taxing power has been resorted to by Con-
gress for like purposes: Congress has no power
to regulate the manufacture of matches, or the
use of oleomargarine; but it has suppressed the
manufacture of the "white phosphorous" match
and has greatly lessened the use of oleomargarine
by imposing heavy taxes upon them. Congress

90 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

has no power to prohibit, or to regulate directly
the issue of bank notes by state banks, but it
indirectly prohibited their issue by imposing a
tax of ten per cent, upon any bank note issued by
a state bank.

The power of Congress over interstate com-
merce has been similarly utilized. Congress
cannot ordinarily provide compensation for ac-
cidents to employees or undertake directly to
suppress prostitution; but it has, as an inci-
dent of regulating interstate commerce, enacted
the Railroad Employers' Liability law and the
White Slave Law; and it has full power over
the instrumentalities of commerce, like the
telegraph and the telephone.

As such exercise of congressional power has
been common for, at least, half a century. Con-
gress should not hesitate now to employ it where
its exercise is urgently needed. For a compre-
hensive prohibition of interlocking directorates is
an essential condition of our attaining the New
Freedom. Such a law would involve a great
change in the relation of the leading banks and
bankers to other businesses. But it is the very
purpose of Money Trust legislation to effect a
great change; and unless it does so, the power of
our financial oligarchy cannot be broken.

SERVE ONE MASTER ONLY 91

But though the enactment of such a law is
essential to the emancipation of business, it will
not alone restore industrial liberty. It must be
supplemented by other remedial measures.

CHAPTER V
WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for
social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said
to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the
most efficient policeman. And publicity has
already played an important part in the struggle
against the Money Trust. The Pujo Committee
has, in the disclosure of the facts concerning
financial concentration, made a most important
contribution toward attainment of the New
Freedom. The battlefield has been surveyed and
charted. The hostile forces have been located,
counted and appraised. That was a necessary
first step — and a long one — towards relief. The
provisions in the Committee's bill concerning the
incorporation of stock exchanges and the state-
ment to be made in connection with the listing of
securities would doubtless have a beneficent effect.
But there should be a further call upon publicity
for service. That potent force must, in the im-
pending struggle, be utilized in many ways as a
continuous remedial measure.

02

WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO 93

WEALTH

Combination and control of other people's
money and of other people's businesses. These
are the main factors in the development of the
Money Trust. But the wealth of the invest-
ment banker is also a factor. And with the ex-
traordinary growth of his wealth in recent
years, the relative importance of wealth as a
factor in financial concentration has grown
steadily. It was wealth which enabled Mr.
Morgan, in 1910, to pay $3,000,000 for $51,000
par value of the stock of the Equitable Life
Insurance Society. His direct income from this
investment was limited by law to less than one-
eighth of one per cent, a year; but it gave legal
control of $504,000,000, of assets. It was wealth
which enabled the Morgan associates to buy from
the Equitable and the Mutual Life Insurance
Company the stocks in the several banking in-
stitutions, which, merged in the Bankers' Trust
Company and the Guaranty Trust Company,
gave them control of $357,000,000 deposits.
It was wealth which enabled Mr. Morgan to
acquire his shares in the First National and
National City banks, worth $21,000,000, through
which he cemented the triple alliance with those
institutions.

94 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Xow, how has this great wealth been accu-
mulated? Some of it was natural accretion.
Some of it is due to special opportunities for
investment wisely availed of. Some of it is due
to the vast extent of the bankers' operations.
Then power breeds wealth as wealth breeds
power. But a main cause of these large fortunes
is the huge tolls taken by those who control the
avenues to capital and to investors. There has
been exacted as toll literally "all that the traffic
will bear."

EXCESSIVE bankers' COMMISSIONS

The Pujo Committee was unfortunately pre-
vented by lack of time from presenting to the
country the evidence covering the amounts taken
by the investment bankers as promoters' fees,
underwriting commissions and profits. Noth-
ing could have demonstrated so clearly the power
exercised by the bankers, as a schedule showing
the aggregate of these taxes levied within recent
years. It would be well worth while now to re-
open the Money Trust investigation merely to
collect these data. But earlier investigations
have disclosed some illuminating, though spor-
adic facts.

The syndicate which jH'omoted the Steel Trust,

WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO 95

took, as compensation for a few weeks' work,
securities yielding $62,500,000 in cash; and of this,
J. P. Morgan & Co. received for their services, as
Syndicate Managers, $12,500,000, besides their
share, as syndicate subscribers, in the remaining
$50,000,000. The Morgan syndicate took for
promoting the Tube Trust $20,000,000 common
stock out of a total issue of $80,000,000 stock
(preferred and common). Nor were monster
commissions limited to trust promotions. More
recently, bankers' syndicates have, in many in-
stances, received for floating preferred stocks
of recapitalized industrial concerns, one-third
of all common stock issued, besides a considerable
sum in cash. And for the sale of preferred stock
of well established manufacturing concerns, cash
commissions (or profits) of from 7 1/2 to 10 per
cent, of the cash raised are often exacted. On
bonds of high-class industrial concerns, bankers'
commissions (or profits) of from 5 to 10 points
have been common.

Nor have these heavy charges been confined
to industrial concerns. Even railroad securities,
supposedly of high grade, have been subjected to
like burdens. At a time when the New Haven's
credit was still unimpaired, J. P. Morgan & Co.
took the New York, Westchester & Boston Rail-

96 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

way first mortgage bonds, guaranteed by the
New Haven at 92 1/2; and they were marketed
at 96 1/4. They took the Portland Terminal
Company bonds, guaranteed by the jNIaine Cen-
tral Railroad — a corporation of unquestionable
credit — at about 88, and these were marketed
at 92.

A large part of these under^vTiting commis-
sions is taken by the great banking houses, not
for their services in selling the bonds, nor in as-
suming risks, but for securing others to sell the
bonds and incur risks. Thus when the Inter-
boro Railway — a most prosperous corporation
— financed its recent §170,000,000 bond issue,
J. P. Morgan & Co. received a 3 per cent, com-
mission, that is, $5,100,000, practically for ar-
ranging that others should underwrite and sell
the bonds.

The aggregate commissions or profits so taken
by leading banking houses can only be conjec-
tured, as the full amount of their transactions
has not been disclosed, and the rate of com-
mission or profit varies very widely. But the
Pujo Committee has supplied some interesting
data bearing upon the subject: Counting the
issues of securities of interstate corporations
only, J. P. Morgan & Co. directly procured the

WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO 97

public marketing alone or in conjunction with
others during the years 1902-1912, of $1,950,-
000,000. What the average commission or profit
taken by J. P. Morgan & Co. was we do not know;
but we do know that every one per cent, on that
sum yields $19,500,000. Yet even that huge
aggregate of $1,950,000,000 includes only a part
of the securities on which commissions or profits
were paid. It does not include any issue of
an intrastate corporation. It does not include
any securities privately marketed. It does not
include any government, state or municipal bonds.
It is to exactions such as these that the wealth
of the investment banker is in large part due.
And since this wealth is an important factor in
the creation of the power exercised by the Money
Trust, we must endeavor to put an end to this
improper wealth getting, as well as to improper
combination. The Money Trust is so powerful
and so firmly entrenched, that each of the sources
of its undue power must be effectually stopped,
if we would attain the New Freedom.

HOW SHALL EXCESSIVE CHARGES BE STOPPED?

The Pujo Committee recommends, as a remedy
for such excessive charges, that interstate cor-
porations be prohibited from entering into any

98 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

agreements creating a sole fiscal agent to dispose
of their security issues; that the issue of the
securities of interstate railroads be placed under
the supervision of the Interstate Commerce
Commission; and that their securities should be
disposed of only upon public or private competi-
tive bids, or under regulations to be prescribed
by the Commission with full powers of investi-
gation that will discover and punish combina-
tions which prevent competition in bidding.
Some of the state public-service commissions
now exercise such power; and it may possibly
be wise to confer this power upon the interstate
commission, although the recommendation of the
Hadley Railroad Securities Commission are to
the contrar3\ But the official regulation as pro-
posed by the Pujo Committee would be confined
to railroad corporations; and the new security
issues of other corporations listed on the New
York Stock Exchange have aggregated in the
last five years $4,525,404,025, which is more than
cither the jailroad or the municipal issues.
Publicity ofi'crs, however, another and even more
promising remedy: a method of regulating
bankers' charges which would apply automa-
tically to railroad, public-service and industrial
corporations alike.

WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO 99

The question may be asked: Why have these
excessive charges been submitted to? Corpora-
tions, which in the first instance bear the charges
for capital, have, doubtless, submitted because
of banker-control; exercised directly through
interlocking directorates, or kindred relations,
and indirectly through combinations among
bankers to suppress competition. But why have
the investors submitted, since ultimately all
these charges are borne by the investors, except
so far as corporations succeed in shifting the
burden upon the community? The large army
of small investors, constituting a substantial
majority of all security buyers, are entirely free
from banker control. Their submission is un-
doubtedly due, in part, to the fact that the
bankers control the avenues to recognizedly safe
investments almost as fully as they do the
avenues to capital. But the investor's serviUty
is due partly, also, to his ignorance of the
facts. Is it not probable that, if each in-
vestor knew the extent to which the seciu-ity he
buys from the banker is diluted by excessive
underwritings, commissions and profits, there
would be a strike of capital against these unjust
exactions?

100 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

THE STRIKE OF CAPITAL

A recent British experience supports this
view. In a brief period last spring nine differ-
ent issues, aggregating $135,840,000, were offered
by syndicates on the London market, and on the
average only about 10 per cent, of these loans
was taken by the public. Money was "tight,"
but the rates of interest offered were very liberal,
and no one doubted that the investors were
well supplied with funds. The London Daily
Mail presented an explanation:

"The long series of rebuffs to new loans at the
hands of investors reached a climax in the ill
success of the great Rothschild issue. It will
remain a topic of financial discussion for many
days, and many in the city are expressing the
opinion that it may have a revolutionary effect
upon the present system of loan issuing and
underwriting. The question being discussed is
that the public have become loth to subscribe
for stock which they believe the underwriters can
afford, by reason of the commission they receive,
to sell subsetjuontly at a lower price than the
issue price, and tliat the Stock Exchange has
begun to realize the public's attitude. The public

WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO 101

sees in the underwriter not so much one who in-
sures that the loan shall be subscribed in return
for its commission as a middleman, who, as it
were, has an opportunity of obtaining stock at
a lower price than the public in order that he
may pass it off at a profit subsequently. They
prefer not to subscribe, but to await an oppor-
tunity of dividing that profit. They feel that
if, when these issues were made, the stock were
offered them at a more attractive price, there
would be less need to pay the underwriters so
high commissions. It is another practical pro-
test, if indirect, against the existence of the
middleman, which protest is one of the features
of present-day finance."

PUBLICITY AS A EEMEDY

Compel bankers when issuing securities to
make public the commissions or profits they are
receiving. Let every circular letter, prospectus
or advertisement of a bond or stock show clearly
what the banker received for his middleman-
services, and what the bonds and stocks net
the issuing corporation. That is knowledge to
which both the existing security holder and the
prospective purchaser is fairly entitled. If the
bankers' compensation is reasonable, consider-

102 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

ing the skill and risk involved, there can be no
objection to making it known. If it is not
reasonable, the investor will ''strike," as in-
vestors seem to have done recently in England.

Such disclosures of bankers' commissions or
profits is demanded also for another reason: It
will aid the investor in judging of the safety of
the investment. In the marketing of securities
there are two classes of risks: One is the risk
whether the banker (or the corporation) will find
ready purchasers for the bonds or stock at the
issue price; the other whether the investor will
get a good article. The maker of the security
and the banker are interested chiefly in getting it
sold at the issue price. The investor is interested
chiefly in buying a good article. The small
investor relies almost exclusively upon the banker
for his knowledge and judgment as to the quality
of the security; and it is this which makes his
relation to the banker one of confidence. But
at present, the investment banker occupies a
position inconsistent with that relation. The
bankers' compensation should, of course, vary
according to the risk he assumes. Where there
is a large risk that the bonds or stock will not be
promptly sold at the issue price, the underwriting
commission (that is the insurance premium)

WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO 103

should be correspondingly large. But the banker
ought not to be paid more for getting investors
to assume a larger risk. In practice the banker
gets the higher commission for underwriting the
weaker security, on the ground -that his own risk
is greater. And the weaker the security, the
greater is the banker's incentive to induce his
customers to relieve him. Now the law should
not undertake (except incidentally in connection
with railroads and public-service corporations) to
fix bankers' profits. And it should not seek to
prevent investors from making bad bargains.
But it is now recognized in the simplest mer-
chandising, that there should be full disclosures.
The archaic doctrine of caveat emptor is vanishing.
The law has begun to require publicity in aid of
fair dealing. The Federal Pure Food Law does
not guarantee quality or prices; but it helps the
buyer to judge of quality by requiring disclosure
of ingredients. Among the most important facts
to be learned for determining the real value of a
seciu-ity is the amount of water it contains.
And any excessive amount paid to the banker
for marketing a security is water. Require a
full disclosure to the investor of the amount of
commissions and profits paid; and not only will
investors be put on their guard, but bankers'

104 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

compensation will tend to adjust itself auto-
matically to what is fair and reasonable. Ex-
cessive commissions — this form of unjustly ac-
quired wealth — will in large part cease.

REAL DISCLOSURE

But the disclosure must be real. And it must
be a disclosure to the investor. It will not suffice
to require merely the filing of a statement of facts
with the Commissioner of Corporations or with
a score of other officials, federal and state. That
would be almost as ineffective as if the Pure Food
Law required a manufactm-er merely to deposit
with the Department a statement of ingredients,
instead of requiring the label to tell the story.
Nor would the filing of a full statement with the
Stock Exchange, if incorporated, as provided
by the Pujo Committee bill, be adequate.

To be effective, knowledge of the facts must be
actually brought home to the investor, and this
can best be done by requiring the facts to be
stated in good, large type in every notice, circu-
lar, letter and advertisement inviting the investor
to purchase. Compliance with this requirement
should also be obhgatory, and not something
which the investor could waive. For the whole
public is interested in putting an end to the

WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO 105

bankers' exactions. England undertook, years
ago, to protect its investors against the wiles of
promoters, by requiring a somewhat similar dis-
closure; but the British act failed, in large
measure of its purpose, partly because under it
the statement of facts was filed only with a public
official, and partly because the investor could
waive the provision. And the British statute has
now been changed in the latter respect.

DISCLOSE SYNDICATE PARTICULARS

The required publicity should also include a
disclosure of all participants in an underwriting.
It is a common incident of underwriting that no
member of the syndicate shall sell at less than the
syndicate price for a definite period, unless the
syndicate is sooner dissolved. In other words,
the bankers make, by agreement, an artificial
price. Often the agreement is probably illegal
under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. This price
maintenance is, however, not necessarily objec-
tionable. It may be entirely consistent with the
general welfare, if the facts are made known.
But disclosure should include a list of those par-
ticipating in the underwriting so that the public
may not be misled. The investor should know
whether his adviser is disinterested.

106 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Not long ago a member of a leading banking
house was undertaking to justify a commission
taken by his firm for floating a now favorite pre-
ferred stock of a manufacturing concern. The
bankers took for their services $250,000 in cash,
besides one-third of the common stock, amount-
ing to about $2,000,000. "Of course," he said,
"that would have been too much if we could have
kept it all for ourselves; but we couldn't. We
had to divide up a large part. There were fifty-
seven participants. "V\'Tiy, we had even to give
$10,000 of stock to (naming the presi-
dent of a leading bank in the city where the busi-
ness was located). He might some day have
been asked what he thought of the stock. If he
had shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't
know, we might have lost many a customer for
the stock. We had to give him $10,000 of the
stock to teach him not to shrug his shoulders."

Think of the effectiveness with practical Amer-
icans of a statement like this:

A. B. & Co.

Investment Bankers

We have today secured substantial control of
the successful machinery business heretofore

WHAT PUBLICITY CAN DO 107

conducted by at , Illinois, which

has been incorporated under the name of the
Excelsior Manufacturing Company with a capital
of $10,000,000, of which $5,000,000 is Preferred
and $5,000,000 Common.

As we have a large clientele of confiding
customers, we were able to secure from the
owners an agreement for marketing the Pre-
ferred stock — we to fix a price which shall net
the owners in cash $95 a share.

We offer this excellent stock to you at $100.73
per share. Our own commission or profit will
be only a little over $5.00 per share, or say,
$250,000 cash, besides $1,500,000 of the Common
stock, which we received as a bonus. This cash
and stock commission we are to divide in various
proportions with the following participants in the
underwriting syndicate:

C. D. & Co., New York

E. F. & Co., Boston

L. M. & Co., Philadelphia

I. K. & Co., New York.

O. P. & Co., Chicago

Were such notices common, the investment
bankers would "be worthy of their hire," for
only reasonable compensation would ordinarily
be taken.

108 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

For marketing the preferred stock, as in the
case of Excelsior ^Manufactui'ing Co. referred to
above, investment bankers were doubtless
essential, and as middlemen they performed a
useful service. But they used their strong position
to make an excessive charge. There are, how-
ever, many cases where the banker's services
can be altogether dispensed with; and where
that is possible he should be eliminated, not
only for economy's sake, but to break up
financial concentration.

CHAPTER VI
WHERE THE BANKER IS SUPERFLUOUS

The abolition of interlocking directorates will
greatly curtail the bankers' power by putting an
end to many improper combinations. Publicity
concerning bankers' commissions, profits and
associates, will lend effective aid, particularly by
curbing undue exactions. Many of the specific
measures recommended by the Pujo Committee
(some of them dealing with technical details)
will go far toward correcting corporate and bank-
ing abuses; and thus tend to arrest financial
concentration. But the investment banker has,
within his legitimate province, acquired control
so extensive as to menace the public welfare,
even where his business is properly conducted.
If the New Freedom is to be attained, every
proper means of lessening that power must be
availed of. A simple and effective remedy,
which can be widely applied, even without new
legislation, lies near at hand: — Ehminate the
banker-middleman where he is superfluous.

Today practically all governments, states and

109

110 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

municipalities pay toll to the banker on all
bonds sold. Why should they? It is not be-
cause the banker is always needed. It is because
the banker controls the only avenue through
which the investor in bonds and stocks can or-
dinarily be reached. The banker has become the
universal tax gatherer. True, the pro rata
of taxes levied by him upon our state and city
governments is less than that levied by him upon
the corporations. But few states or cities escape
payment of some such tax to the banker on every
loan it makes. Even where the new issues of
bonds are sold at public auction, or to the highest
bidder on sealed proposals, the bankers' syndicates
usually secure large blocks of the bonds which
ai-e sold to the people at a considerable profit.
The middleman, even though unnecessary, col-
lects his tribute.

There is a legitimate field for dealers in state
and municipal bonds, as for other merchants.
Investors already owning such bonds must have
a medium through which they can sell their
holdings. And those states or municipalities
which lack an established reputation among
investors, or which must seek more distant
markets, need the banker to distribute new issues.
But there are many states and cities which have

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 111

an established reputation and have a home
market at hand. These should sell their bonds
direct to investors without the intervention of a
middleman. And as like conditions prevail with
some corporations, their bonds and stocks should
also be sold direct to the investor. Both financial
efficiency and industrial liberty demand that the
bankers' toll be abolished, where that is possible.

BANKER AND BROKER

The business of the investment banker must
not be confused with that of the bond and stock
broker. The two are often combined; but the
functions are essentially different. The broker
performs a very limited service. He has properly
nothing to do with the original issue of securities,
nor with their introduction into the market. He
merely negotiates a purchase or sale as agent for
another under specific orders. He exercises no
discretion, except in the method of bringing
buyer and seller together, or of executing orders.
For his humble service he receives a moderate
compensation, a commission, usually one-eighth
of one per cent. (12 1/2 cents for each $100) on
the par value of the security sold. The invest-
ment banker also is a mere middleman. But he
is a principal, not an agent. He is also a merchant

112 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

in bonds and stocks. The compensation received
for his part in the transaction is in many cases
more accurately described as profit than as com-
mission. So far as concerns new issues of
government, state and municipal bonds, espe-
ciall}', he acts as merchant, buying and selling
securities on his own behalf; buying commonly
at wholesale from the maker and selling at retail
to the investors; taking the merchant's risk and
the merchant's profits. On purchases of corpo-
rate securities the profits are often very large;
but even a large profit may be entirely proper;
for when the banker's services are needed and
are properl}^ performed, they are of great value.
On purchases of government, state and munic-
ipal securities the profit is usually smaller; but
even a very small profit cannot be justified, if
unnecessary.

HOW THE BANKER CAN SERVE

The banker's services include three distinct
functions, and only three:

First: Specifically as expert. The investment
banker has tlie responsibility of the ordinary
retailer to sell only that merchandise which is
good of its kind. But his responsibility in this
respect is unusually heavy, because he deals in an

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 113

article on which a great majority of his customers
are unable, themselves, to pass intelligent judg-
ment without aid. The purchase by the investor
of most corporate securities is little better than a
gamble, where he fails to get the advice of some
one who has investigated the security thoroughly
as the banker should. For few investors have the
time, the facilities, or the ability to investigate
properly the value of corporate securities.

Second: Specifically as distributor. The banker
performs an all-important service in providing
an outlet for securities. His connections enable
him to reach possible buyers quickly. And good-
will— that is, possession of the confidence of regu-
lar customers — enables him to effect sales where
the maker of the security might utterly fail to
find a market.

Third: Specifically as jobber or retailer. The
investment banker, like other merchants, carries
his stock in trade until it can be marketed. In
this he performs a service which is often of great
value to the maker. Needed cash is obtained
immediately, because the whole issue of securities
can thus be disposed of by a single transaction.
And even where there is not immediate payment,
the knowledge that the money will be provided
when needed is often of paramount importance.

114 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

By carrying securities in stock, the banker per-
forms a service also to investors, who are thereby
enabled to buy securities at such times as they
desire.

Whenever makers of securities or investors
require all or any of these three services, the
investment banker is needed, and payment of
compensation to him is proper. Where there is
no such need, the banker is cleai'ly superfluous.
And in respect to the original issue of many of our
state and municipal bonds, and of some corporate
securities, no such need exists.

WHERE THE BANKER SERVES NOT

It needs no banker experts in value to tell us
that bonds of Massachusetts or New York, of
Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore and of scores
of lesser American cities, are safe investments.
The basic financial facts in regard to such bonds
are a part of the common knowledge of many
American investors; and, certainly, of most pos-
sible investors who reside in the particular state
or city whose bonds arc in question. Where the
financial facts are not generally known, they are
so simple, that they can be easily summarized and
understood by any prospective investor without
interpretation by an expert. Bankers often

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 115

employ, before purchasing securities, their own
accountants to verify the statements supplied by
the makers of the security, and use these account-
ants' certificates as an aid in selling. States and
municipalities, the makers of the securities,
might for the same purpose employ independent
public accountants of high reputation, who would
give their certificates for use in marketing the
securities. Investors could also be assured with-
out banker-aid that the basic legal conditions are
sound. Bankers, before purchasing an issue of
securities, customarily obtain from their own
counsel an opinion as to its legality, which inves-
tors are invited to examine. It would answer
the same purpose, if states and municipalities
should supplement the opinion of their legal
representatives by that of independent counsel
of recognized professional standing, who would
certify to the legality of the issue.

Neither should an investment banker be needed
to find investors walling to take up, in small lots,
a new issue of bonds of New York or Massa-
chusetts, of Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore, or
a hundred other American cities. A state or
municipality seeking to market direct to the
investor its own bonds would naturally experi-
ence, at the outset, some difficulty in marketing a

116 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

large issue. And in a newer communitj^, where
there is little accumulation of unemployed capital,
it might be impossible to find buyers for any large
issue. Investors are apt to be conservative;
and they have been trained to regard the inter-
vention of the banker as necessary. The bankers
would naturally discoiu-age any attempt of states
and cities to dispense with their services. En-
trance upon a market, hitherto monopolized by
them, would usually have to be struggled for.
But banker-fed investors, as well as others could,
in time, be brought to reahze the advantage of
avoiding the middleman and deahng dii'ectly with
responsible borrowers. Governments, like private
concerns, would have to do educational work; but
this publicity would be much less expensive and
much more productive than that undertaken by
the bankers. Many investors are already impa-
tient of banker exactions; and eager to deal
directly with governmental agencies in whom they
have more confidence. And a great demand could,
at once, be developed among smaller investors
whom the bankers have been unable to interest,
and who now never buy state or municipal bonds.
The opening of this new field would fut-nish a mar-
ket, in some respects more desirable and certainly
wider tluui th:i( now reached by the bankers.

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 117

Neither do states or cities ordinarily need the
services of the investment banker to carry their
bonds pending distribution to the investor.
Where there is immediate need for large funds,
states and cities — at least the older communities
— should be able to raise the money temporarily,
quite as well as the bankers do now, while await-
ing distribution of their bonds to the investor.
Bankers carry the bonds with other people's
money, not with their own. Why should not
cities get the temporary use of other people's
money as well? Bankers have the preferential
use of the deposits in the banks, often because
they control the banks. Free these institutions
from banker-control, and no applicant to borrow
the people's money will be received with greater
favor than our large cities. Boston, with its
$1,500,000,000 of assessed valuation and $78,033,-
128 net debt, is certainly as good a risk as even
Lee, Higginson & Co. or Kidder, Peabody & Co.

But ordinarily cities do not, or should not,
require large sums of money at any one time.
Such need of large sums does not arise except
from time to time where maturing loans are to be
met, or when some existing public utility plant
is to be taken over from private owners. Large
issues of bonds for any other purpose are usually

118 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

made in anticipation of future needs, rather than
to meet present necessities. Modern efficient
public financiering, through substituting serial
bonds for the long term issues (which in Massa-
chusetts has been made obligatory) will, in time,
remove the need of large sums at one time for
paying maturing debts, since each year's maturi-
ties will be paid from the year's taxes. Purchases
of existing public utiUty plants are of rare occur-
rence, and are apt to be preceded by long periods
of negotiation. When they occur they can, if
foresight be exercised, usually be financed without
full cash paj^ment at one time.

Today, when a large issue of bonds is made, the
banker, while ostensibly paying his own money to
the city, actually pays to the city other people's
money which he has borrowed from the banks.
Then the banks get back, through the city's de-
posits, a large part of the money so received. And
when the money is returned to the bank, the
banker has the opportunity of borrowing it again
for other operations. The process results in
double loss to the city. The city loses by not
getting from the banks as much for its bonds as
investors would pay. And then it loses interest
on the money raised before it is needed. For the
bankers receive from the city bonds bearing rarely

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 119

less than 4 per cent, interest; while the proceeds
are deposited in the banks which rarely allow
more than 2 per cent, interest on the daily
balances.

CITIES THAT HELPED THEMSELVES

In the present year some cities have been led by
necessity to help themselves. The bond market
was poor. Business was uncertain, money tight
and the ordinary investor reluctant. Bankers
were loth to take new bond issues. Municipali-
ties were unwilling to pay the high rates de-
manded of them. And many cities were prohib-
ited by law or ordinance from paying more than
4 per cent, interest; while good municipal bonds
were then selling on a 4 1/2 to 5 per cent, basis.
But money had to be raised, and the attempt was
made to borrow it direct from the lenders instead
of from the banker-middleman. Among the
cities which raised money in this way were Phila-
delphia, Baltimore, St. Paul, and Utica, New
York.

Philadelphia, under Mayor Blankenburg's
inspiration, sold nearly $4,175,000 in about two
days on a 4 per cent, basis and another ''over-the-
counter" sale has been made since. In Balti-
more, with the assistance of the Sun- $4,766,000

120 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

were sold ''over the counter" on a 4 1/2 per cent,
basis. Utica's two ''popular sales" of 4 1/2
per cent, bonds were largely "over-subscribed."
And since then other cities large and small
have had their "over-the-counter" bond sales.
The experience of Utica, as stated by its Control-
ler, Fred G. Reusswig, must prove of general
interest :

"In June of the present year I advertised for
sale two issues, one of S 100,000, and the other of
$19,000, bearing interest at 4 1/2 per cent. The
latter issue was purchased at par by a local bidder
and of the former we purchased $10,000 for our
sinking funds. That left $90,000 unsold, for
which there were no bidders, which was the first
time that I had been unable to sell our bonds.
About this time the 'popular sales' of Baltimore
and Philadelphia attracted my attention. The
laws in effect in those cities did not restrict the
officials as does our law and I could not copy their
methods. I realized that there was plenty of
money in this immediate vicinity and if I could
devise a plan conforming with our laws under
which I could inake the sale attractive to small
investors it would undoubtedly prove successful.
I had found, in previous efforts to interest people
of small means, that they did not understand the

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 121

meaning of premium and would rather not buy
than bid above par. They also objected to mak-
ing a deposit with their bids. In arranging for
the 'popular sales' I announced in the papers
that, while I must award to the highest bidder, it
was my opinion that a par bid would be the highest
bid. I also announced that we would issue bonds
in denominations as low as $100 and that we
would not require a deposit except where the bid
was $5,000 or over. Then I succeeded in getting
the local papers to print editorials and local
notices upon the subject of municipal bonds, with
particular reference to those of Utica and the
forthcoming sale. All the prospective purchaser
had to do was to fill in the amount desired,
sign his name, seal the bid and await the day
for the award. I did not have many bidders for
very small amounts. There was only one for
$100 at the first sale and one for $100 at the
second sale and not more than ten who wanted
less than $500. Most of the bidders were looking
for from $1,000 to $5,000, but nearly all were peo-
ple of comparatively small means, and with some
the investment represented all their savings. In
awarding the bonds I gave preference to residents
of Utica and I had no difficulty in apportioning
the various maturities in a satisfactory way.

122 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

"I believe that there are a large number of per-
sons in every cit}^ who would buy their own bonds
if the way w^ere made easier by law. Syracuse
and the neighboring village of Ilion, both of which
had been unable to sell in the usual way, came to
me for a program of procedure and both have
since had successful sales along similar lines.
We have been able by this means to keep the
interest rate on our bonds at 4 1/2 per cent., while
cities which have followed the old plan of relying
upon bond houses have had to increase the rate
to 5 per cent. I am in favor of amending the law
in such a manner that the Common Council,
approved by the Board of Estimate and Appor-
tionment, may fix the prices at which bonds shall
be sold, instead of calling for competitive bids.
Then place the bonds on sale at the Controller's
office to any one who will pay the price. The
prices upon each issue should be graded according
to the different values of different maturities.
Under the present law, as we have it, conditions
are too complicated to make a sale practicable
except upon a basis of par bids."

THE ST. PAUL EXPERIMENT

St. Paul wisely introduced into its experiment a
more democratic feature, which Tom L. Johnson,

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 123

Cleveland's great mayor, thought out (but did not
utilize), and which his friend W. B. Colver, now
Editor-in-Chief of the Daily News, brought to the
attention of the St. Paul officials. Mayor John-
son had recognized the importance of reaching the
small savings of the people; and concluded that
it was necessary not only to issue the bonds in
very small denominations, but also to make them
redeemable at par. He sought to combine
practically, bond investment with the savings
bank privilege. The fact that municipal bonds
are issuable ordinarily only in large denomina-
tions, say, $1,000, presented an obstacle to be
overcome. Mayor Johnson's plan was to have
the sinking fund commissioners take large blocks
of the bonds, issue against them certificates in
denominations of $10, and have the commis-
sioners agree (under their power to purchase
securities) to buy the certificates back at par and
interest. Savings bank experience, he insisted,
showed that the redemption feature would not
prove an embarrassment; as the percentage of
those wishing to withdraw their money is small;
and deposits are nearly always far in excess of
withdrawals.

The St. Paul sinking fund commissioners and
City Attorney O'Neill approved the Johnson

124 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

plan; and in the face of high money rates, sold on
a 4 per cent, basis, during July, certificates to the
net amount of $502,300; during August, $147,-
000; and during September, over $150,000, the
average net sales being about $5,700 a day.
Mr. Colver, reporting on the St. Paul experience,
said:

''There have been about 2,000 individual pur-
chasers making the average deposit about $350
or $3G0. There have been no certificates sold
to banks. During the first month the deposits
averaged considerably higher and for this reason :
in very many cases people who had savings which
represented the accumulation of considerable
time, withdrew their money from the postal sav-
ings banks, from the regular banks, from various
hiding places and deposited them with the city.
Now these same people are coming once or twice
a month and making deposits of ten or twenty
dollars, so that the average of the individual
deposit has fallen very rapidly during September
and every indication is that the number of small
deposits will continue to increase and the rela-
tively large deposits become less frequent as
time goes on.

As a matter of fact, these certificate deposits
are stable, far more than the deposits and invest-

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 125

ments of richer people who watch for advanta-
geous reinvestments and who shift their money
about rather freely. The man with three or
four hundred dollars savings will suffer almost
anything before he will disturb that fund. We
believe that the deposits every day here, day in
and day out, will continue to take care of all the
withdrawals and still leave a net gain for the day,
that net figure at present being about $5,700 a
day."

Many cities are now prevented from selling
bonds direct to the small investors, through laws
which compel bonds to be issued in large denomi-
nations or which require the issue to be offered
to the highest bidder. These legislative limita-
tions should be promptly removed.

SALESMANSHIP AND EDUCATION

Such success as has already been attained is
largely due to the unpaid educational work of
leading progressive newspapers. But the educa-
tional work to be done must not be confined to
teaching "the people" — the buyers of the bonds.
Municipal officials and legislators have quite as
much to learn. They must, first of all, study
salesmanship. Selling bonds to the people is a

126 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

new art, still undeveloped. The general problems
have not yet been worked out. And besides
these problems common to all states and cities,
there will be, in nearly every community, local
problems which must be solved, and local difficul-
ties which must be overcome. The proper solu-
tion even of the general problems must take con-
siderable time. There will have to be many ex-
periments made; and doubtless there will be many
failures. Every great distributor of merchandise
knows the obstacles which he had to overcome
before success was attained; and the large sums
that had to be invested in opening and preparing
a market. Individual concerns have spent mil-
lions in wise publicity; and have ultimateh' reaped
immense profits when the market was won.
Cities must take their lessons from these great
distributors. Cities must be ready to study the
problems and to spend prudently for proper pub-
licity work. It might, in the end, prove an econ-
omy, even to allow, on particular issues, where nec-
essary, a somewhat higher interest rate than bank-
ers would exact, if tliereby a direct market for
bonds could be secured. Future operations would
yield large economics. And the obtaining of a
direct market for city bonds is growing ever more
important, because of the huge increase in loans

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 127

which must attend the constant expansion of
municipal functions. In 1898 the new munic-
ipal issues aggregated $103,084,793; in 1912,
$380,810,287.

SAVINGS BANKS AS CUSTOIMERS

In New York, Massachusetts and the other
sixteen states where a system of purely mutual
savings banks is general, it is possible, with a
little organization, to develop an important mar-
ket for the direct purchaser of bonds. The
bonds issued by Massachusetts cities and towns
have averaged recently about $15,000,000 a year,
and those of the state about $3,000,000. The 194
Massachusetts savings banks, with aggregate
assets of $902,105,755.94, held on October 31,
1912, $90,536,581.32 in bonds and notes of states
and municipalities. Of this sum about $60,000,-
000 are invested in bonds and notes of Massa-
chusetts cities and towns, and about $8,000,000 in
state issues. The deposits in the savings banks
are increasing at the rate of over $30,000,000 a
year. Massachusetts state and municipal bonds
have, within a few years, come to be issued tax
exempt in the hands of the holder, whereas other
classes of bonds usually held by savings banks
are subject to a tax of one-half of one per cent.

128 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

of the market value. Massachusetts savings
banks, therefore, will to an increasing extent, se-
lect ^Massachusetts municipal issues for high-grade
bond investments. Certainly Massachusetts cit-
ies and towns might, with the cooperation of the
Commonwealth, easily develop a "home market"
for "over-the-counter" bond business with the
savings banks. And the savings banks of other
states offer similar opportunities to their munici-
palities.

COOPERATION

Bankers obtained their power through com-
bination. Why should not cities and states
by means of cooperation free themselves from
the bankers? For by cooperation between the
cities and the state, the direct marketing of
municipal bonds could be greatly facilitated.

Massachusetts has 33 cities, each with a popu-
lation of over 12,000 persons; 71 towns each
with a population of over 5,000; and 250 towns
each with a population of less than 5,000. Three
hundred and eight of these municipalities now
have funded indebtedness outstanding. The
aggregate net indebtedness is about $180,000,000.
Every year about $15,000,000 of bonds and notes
are issued by the Massachusetts cities and towna

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 129

for the purpose of meeting new requirements and
refunding old indebtedness. If these munici-
palities would cooperate in marketing securities,
the market for the bonds of each municipality-
would be widened; and there would exist also a
common market for Massachusetts municipal
securities which would be usually well supplied,
would receive proper publicity and would attract
investors. Successful merchandising ob\dously
involves carrying an adequate, well-assorted
stock. If every city acts alone, in endeavoring
to market its bonds direct, the city's bond-selling
activity will necessarily be sporadic. Its ability
to supply the investor will be limited by its own
necessities for money. The market will also be
limited to the bonds of the particular municipal-
ity. But if a state and its cities should cooperate,
there could be developed a continuous and broad
market for the sale of bonds ''over-the-counter."
The joint selling agency of over three hundred
municipalities, — as in Massachusetts— would natu-
rally have a constant supply of assorted bonds
and notes which could be had in as small amounts
as the investor might want to buy them. It
would be a simple matter to establish such a
joint selUng agency by which municipalities,

130 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

under proper regulation of, and aid from the
state, would cooperate.

And cooperation among the cities and with the
state might serve in another important respect.
These 354 Massachusetts municipalities carry in
the aggregate large bank balances. Sometimes
the balance carried by a city represents unex-
pended revenues; sometimes unexpended pro-
ceeds of loans. On these balances they usually
receive from the banks 2 per cent, interest. The
balances of municipalities vary like those of other
depositors; one having idle funds, when another
is in need. Why should not all of these cities
and towns cooperate, making, say, the State their
common banker, and supply each other with
funds as farmers and laborers cooperate tlirough
credit unions? Then cities would get, instead of
2 per cent, on their balances, all their money
was worth.

The Commonwealth of jMassachusetts holds
now in its sinking and other funds nearly S30,000-
000 of Massachusetts municipal securities, con-
stituting nearly tliree-fourths of all securities held
in these funds. Its annual purchases aggregate
nearly $4,000,000. Its purchases direct from
cities and towns have already exceeded $1,000,000
this year. It would 1)0 but a sinii)Io extension of

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 131

the state's function to cooperate, as indicated, in
a joint, Municipal Bond Selling Agency an dCredit
Union. It would be a distinct advance in the
efficiency of state and municipal financing;
and what is even more important, a long step
toward the emancipation of the people from
banker-control.

CORPORATE SELF-HELP

Strong corporations with established reputa-
tions, locally or nationally, could emancipate
themselves from the banker in a similar manner.
Public-service corporations in some of our leading
cities could easily establish ''over-the-counter"
home markets for their bonds; and would be
greatly aided in this by the supervision now being
exercised by some state commissions over the
issue of securities by such corporations. Such
corporations would gain thereby not only in
freedom from banker-control and exactions, but
in the winning of valuable local support. The
investor's money would be followed by his sym-
pathy. In things economic, as well as in things
political, wisdom and safety lie in direct appeals to
the people.

The Pennsylvania Raiboad now relies largely
upon its stockholders for new capital. But a

132 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

corporation with its long-continued success and
reputation for stability should have much wider
financial support and should eliminate the banker
altogether. With the 2,700 stations on its
system, the Pennsylvania could, with a slight
expense, create nearly as many avenues through
which money would be obtainable to meet its
growing needs.

BANKER PROTECTORS

It may be urged that reputations often outlive
the conditions which justify them, that outlived
reputations are pitfalls to the investors; and that
the investment banker is needed to guard him
from such dangers. True; but when have the
big bankers or (their little satellites protected the
people from such pitfalls?

Was there ever a more be-bankered railroad
than the New Haven? Was there ever a more
banker-led community of investors than New
England? Six years before the fall of that great
system, the hidden dangers were pointed out to
these banker-experts. Proof was furnished of
the rotting timbers. The disaster-breeding poli-
cies were laid bare. The bankers took no action.
Repeatedly, thereafter, the bankers' attention
was called to the steady deterioration of the

SUPERFLUOUS BANKERS 133

structure. The New Haven books disclose 11,-
481 stockholders who are residents of Massa-
chusetts; 5,682 stockholders in Connecticut; 735
in Rhode Island; and 3,510 in New York. Of
the New Haven stockholders 10,474 were women.
Of the New Haven stockholders 10,222 were of
such modest means that their holdings were from
one to ten shares only. The investors were
sorely in need of protection. The city directories
disclose 146 banking houses in Boston, 26 in
Providence, 33 in New Haven and Hartford,
and 357 in New York City. But who, connected
with those New England and New York bank-
ing houses, during the long years which pre-
ceded the recent investigation of the Interstate
Commerce Commission, raised either voice or
pen in protest against the continuous mismanage-
ment of that great trust property or warned the
public of the impending disaster? Some of the
bankers sold their own stock holdings. Some
bankers whispered to a few favored customers
advice to dispose of New Haven stock. But not
one banker joined those who sought to open the
eyes of New England to the impending disaster
and to avert it by timely measures. New
England's leading banking houses were ready to
"cooperate" with the New Haven management

134 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

in taking generous commissions for marketing the
endless supply of new securities; but they did
nothing to protect the investors. Were these
bankers blind? Or were they afraid to oppose
the will of J. P. Morgan & Co.?

Perhaps it is the banker who, most of all,
needs the New Freedom.

CHAPTER VII
BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS

J. P. Morgan & Co. declare, in their letter to
the Pujo Committee, that ''practically all the
railroad and industrial development of this coun-
try has taken place initially through the medium
of the great banking houses." That statement is
entirely unfounded in fact. On the contrary
nearly every such contribution to our comfort and
prosperity was "initiated" without their aid.
The ''great banking houses" came into relation
with these enterprises, either after success had
been attained, or upon "reorganization" after
the possibility of success had been demonstrated,
but the funds of the hardy pioneers, who had
risked their all, were exhausted.

This is true of our early railroads, of our
early street railways, and of the automobile; of
the telegraph, the telephone and the wireless;
of gas and oil; of harvesting machinery, and of
our steel industry; of the textile, paper and shoe
industries; and of nearly every other important
branch of manufacture. The initiation of each

13«

136 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

of these enterprises may properly be character-
ized as "great transactions"; and the men who
contributed the financial aid and business man-
agement necessary for their introduction are
entitled to share, equally with inventors, in our
gratitude for what has been accomplished. But
the instances are extremely rare where the origi-
nal financing of such enterprises was undertaken
by investment bankers, great or small. It was
usually done by some common business man,
accustomed to taking risks; or by some well-to-
do friend of the inventor or pioneer, who was
influenced largely by considerations other than
money-getting. Here and there you will find
that banker-aid was given; but usually in those
cases it was a small local banking concern, not
a "great banking house" which helped to "initi-
ate" the undertaking.

RAILROADS

We have come to associate the great bankers
with railroads. But their part was not conspicu-
ous in the early history of the Eastern railroads;
and in the ^liddle West the experience was, to
some extent, similar. The Boston & Maine
Railroad owns and leases 2,215 miles of line; but
it is a composite of about ICG separate railroad

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 137

companies. The New Haven Railroad owns
and leases 1,996 miles of line; but it is a compos-
ite of 112 separate railroad companies. The
necessary capital to build these little roads was
gathered together, partly through state, county
or municipal aid; partly from business men or
landholders who sought to advance their special
interests; partly from investors; and partly from
well-to-do public-spirited men, who wished to
promote the welfare of their particular communi-
ties. About seventy-five years after the first of
these railroads was built, J. P. Morgan & Co.
became fiscal agent for all of them by creating the
New Haven-Boston & Maine monopoly.

STEAMSHIPS

The history of our steamship lines is similar.
In 1807, Robert Fulton, with the financial aid of
Robert R. Livingston, a judge and statesman — not
a banker — demonstrated with the Claremont,
that it was practicable to propel boats by steam.
In 1833 the three Cunard brothers of Halifax
and 232 other persons — stockholders of the
Quebec and Halifax Steam Navigation Com-
pany— joined in supplying about $80,000 to
build the Royal William, — the first steamer to
cross the Atlantic. In 1902, many years after

138 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

individual enterprises had developed practically
all the great ocean lines, J. P. IMorgan & Co.
floated the International Mercantile Marine
with its 852,744,000 of 4 1/2 bonds, now selling
at about 60, and $100,000,000 of stock (pre-
ferred and common) on which no dividend has
ever been paid. It was just sixty- two years after
the first regular line of transatlantic steamers —
The Cunard — was founded that Mr. Morgan
organized the Shipping Trust.

TELEGRAPH

The story of the telegraph is similar. The
money for developing Morse's invention was
supplied by his partner and co-worker, Alfred
Vail. The initial line (from Washington to Balti-
more) was built with an appropriation of $30,000
made by Congress in 1843. Sixty-six years later
J. P. Morgan & Co. became bankers for
the Western Union through financing its pur-
chase by the American Telephone & Telegraph
Company.

HARVESTING MACHINERY

Next to railroads and steamships, harvesting
machinery has probably been the most potent
factor in the development of America; and most

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 139

important of the harvesting machines was Cyrus
H. McCormick's reaper. That made it possible
to increase the grain harvest twenty- or thirty-
fold. No investment banker had any part in in-
troducing this great business man's invention.

McCormick was without means; but William
Butler Ogden, a railroad builder, ex-Mayor and
leading citizen of Chicago, supplied $25,000 with
which the first factory was built there in 1847.
Fifty-five years later, J. P. Morgan & Co. per-
formed the service of combining the five great
harvester companies, and received a commission
of $3,000,000. The concerns then consolidated
as the International Harvester Company, with
a capital stock of $120,000,000, had, despite
their huge assets and earning power, been pre-
viously capitalized, in the aggregate, at only
$10,500,000 — strong evidence that in all the
preceding years no investment banker had
financed them. Indeed, McCormick was as able
in business as in mechanical invention. Two
years after Odgen paid him $25,000 for a half
interest in the business, McCormick bought it
back for $50,000; and thereafter, until his death
in 1884, no one but members of the McCormick
family had any interest in the business.

140 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

THE BANKER ERA

It may be urged that railroads and steamships,
the telegraph and harvesting machinery were
introduced before the accumulation of investment
capital had developed the investment banker,
and before America's "great banking houses"
had been established; and that, consequently, it
would be fairer to inquire what services bankers
had rendered in connection with later industrial
development. The firm of J. P. Morgan & Co.
is fifty-five years old; Kuhn, Loeb & Co. fifty-
six years old; Lee, Higginson & Co. over fifty
years; and Kidder, Peabody & Co. forty-eight
years; and yet the investment banker seems to
have had almost as little part in "initiating"
the great improvements of the last half century,
as did bankers in the earlier period.

STEEL

The modern steel industry of America is forty-
five years old. The "great bankers" had no part
in initiating it. Andrew Carnegie, then already
a man of large means, introduced the Bessemer
process in 18G8. In the next thirty years our
steel and iron industry increased greatly. By
1898 we had far outstripped all competitors.

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 141

America's production about equalled the aggre-
gate of England and Germany. We had also
reduced costs so much that Europe talked of the
"American Peril." It was 1898, when J. P.
Morgan & Co. took their first step in forming the
Steel Trust, by organizing the Federal Steel
Company. Then followed the combination of
the tube mills into an $80,000,000 corporation,
J. P. Morgan & Co. taking for their syndicate
services $20,000,000 of common stock. About
the same time the consolidation of the bridge and
structural works, the tin plate, the sheet steel, the
hoop and other mills followed; and finally, in
1901, the Steel Trust was formed, with a capitali-
zation of $1,402,000,000. These combinations
came thirty years after the steel industry had
been "initiated".

THE TELEPHONE

The telephone industry is less than forty years
old. It is probably America's greatest contri-
bution to industrial development. The bankers
had no part in "initiating" it. The glory belongs
to a simple, enthusiastic, warm-hearted, business
man of Haverhill, Massachusetts, who was willing
to risk his own money. H. N. Casson tells of
this, most interestingly, in his "History of the
Telephone":

142 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

"The only man who had monej' and dared to
stake it on the future of the telephone was
Thomas Sanders, and he did this not mainly for
business reasons. Both he and Hubbard were
attached to Bell primaril}" by sentiment, as Bell
had removed the blight of dumbness from San-
ders' little son, and was soon to marry Hubbard's
daughter. Also, Sanders had no expectation, at
first, that so much money would be needed. He
was not rich. His entire business, which was
that of cutting out soles for shoe manufacturers,
was not at any time worth more than thirty-
five thousand dollars. Yet, from 1874 to 1878,
he had advanced nine-tenths of the money that
was spent on the telephone. The first five
thousand telephones, and more, were made with
his money. And so many long, expensive months
dragged by before any relief came to Sanders,
that he was compelled, much against his will and
his business judgment, to stretch his credit
within an inch of the breaking-point to help Bell
and the telephone. Desperately he signed note
after note until he faced a total of one hundred
and ten thousand dollars. If the new 'scientific
toy' succeeded, which he often doubted, he would
be the richest citizen in Haverhill; and if it failed,
which he sorely feared, he would be a bankrupt.

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 143

Sanders and Hubbard were leasing telephones two
by two, to business men who previously had been
using the private lines of the Western Union
Telegraph Company. This great corporation
was at this time their natural and inevitable
enemy. It had swallowed most of its competi-
tors, and was reaching out to monopolize all
methods of communication by wire. The rosiest
hope that shone in front of Sanders and Hubbard
was that the Western Union might conclude to
buy the Bell patents, just as it had already bought
many others. In one moment of discourage-
ment they had offered the telephone to President
Orton, of the Western Union, for $100,000; and
Orton had refused it. 'What use,' he asked
pleasantly, ' could this company make of an elec-
trical toy?'

"But besides the operation of its own wires, the
Western Union was supplying customers with
various kinds of printing-telegraphs and dial-
telegraphs, some of which could transmit sixty
words a minute. These accurate instruments, it
believed, could never be displaced by such a scien-
tific oddity as the telephone, and it continued to
believe this until one of its subsidiary companies
— the Gold and Stock — reported that several of
its machines had been superseded by telephones.

144 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

"At once the Western Union awoke from its
indifference. Even this tiny nibbUng at its
business must be stopped. It took action quickly,
and organized the 'American Speaking-Tele-
phone Company,' and with $300,000 capital, and
with three electrical inventors, Edison, Gray, and
Dolbear, on its staff. With all the bulk of its
great wealth and prestige, it swept down upon
Bell and his little body-guard. It trampled
upon Bell's patent with as Uttle concern as an
elephant can have when he tramples upon an
ant's nest. To the complete bewilderment of
Bell, it coolly announced that it had the only
original telephone, and that it was ready to sup-
ply superior telephones with all the latest
improvements made by the original inventors —
Dolbear, Gray, and Edison.

"The result was strange and unexpected. The
Bell group, instead of being driven from the field,
were at once lifted to a higher level in the business
world. And the Western Union, in the endeavor
to protect its private lines, became involuntarily
a 'bell-wether' to lead capitalists in the direction
of the telephone."

Even then, when financial aid came to the Bell
enterprise, it was from cai)italists, not from l)ank-
ers, and among these capitalists was William II.

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 145

Forbes (son of the builder of the Burlington) who
became the first President of the Bell Telephone
Company. That was in 1878. More than twenty
years later, after the telephone had spread over
the world, the great house of Morgan came
into financial control of the property. The
American Telephone & Telegraph Company was
formed. The process of combination became
active. Since January, 1900, its stock has
increased from $25,886,300 to $344,606,400. In
six years (1906 to 1912), the Morgan associates
marketed about $300,000,000 bonds of that com-
pany or its subsidiaries. In that period the vol-
ume of business done by the telephone companies
had, of course, grown greatly, and the plant
had to be constantly increased; but the proceeds
of these huge security issues were used, to a large
extent, in effecting combinations; that is, in
buying out telephone competitors; in buying
control of the Western Union Telegraph Com-
pany; and in buying up outstanding stock
interests in semi-independent Bell companies.
It is these combinations which have led to the
investigation of the Telephone Company by the
Department of Justice; and they are, in large
part, responsible for the movement to have the
government take over the telephone business.

146 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

ELECTRICAL MACHINERY

The business of manufacturing electrical
machinery and apparatus is only a little over
thirty years old. J. P. ]\Iorgan & Co. became
interested early in one branch of it; but their
dominance of the business today is due, not to
their ''initiating" it, but to their effecting a com-
bination, and organizing the General Electric
Company in 1892. There were then three
large electrical companies, the Thomson-Hous-
ton, the Edison and the Westinghouse, besides
some small ones. The Thomson-Houston of
Lynn, Massachusetts, was in many respects the
leader, having been formed to introduce, among
other things, important inventions of Prof. Elihu
Thomson and Prof. Houston. L3'nn is one of the
principal shoe-manufacturing centers of America.
It is within ten miles of State Street, Boston; but
Thomson's early financial support came not from
Boston bankers, but mainly from Lynn business
men and investors; men active, energetic, and
used to taking risks with their own money.
Prominent among them was Charles A. Coffin,
a shoe manufacturer, who became connected with
the Thomson-Ht)uston Company upon its organi-
zation and president of the General Electric when
Mr. Morgan formed that company in 1892, by

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 147

combining the Thomson-Houston and the Edison.
To his continued service, supported by other
Thomson-Houston men in high positions, the
great prosperity of the company is, in large part,
due. The two companies so combined controlled
probably one-half of all electrical patents then
existing in America; and certainly more than
half of those which had any considerable value.

In 1896 the General Electric pooled its patents
with the Westinghouse, and thus competition was
further restricted. In 1903 the General Electric
absorbed the Stanley Electric Company, its
other large competitor; and became the largest
manufacturer of electric apparatus and machinery
in the world. In 1912 the resources of the Com-
pany were $131,942,144. It billed sales to the
amount of $89,182,185. It employed directly
over 60,000 persons, — more than a fourth as many
as the Steel Trust. And it is protected against
"undue" competition; for one of the Morgan
partners has been a director, since 1909, in the
Westinghouse, — the only other large electrical
machinery company in America.

THE AUTOMOBILE

The automobile industry is about twenty
years old. It is now America's most prosperous

148 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

business. When Henry B. Joy, President of the
Packard Motor Car Company, was asked to
what extent the bankers aided in ''initiating"
the automobile, he replied:

"It is the observable facts of history, it is also
my experience of thirty years as a business man,
banker, etc., that first the seer conceives an oppor-
tunity. He has faith in his almost second sight.
He believes he can do something — develop a
business — construct an industry — build a railroad
— or Niagara Falls Power Company, — and make
it pay!

"Now the human measure is not the actual
physical construction, but the 'make it pay'!

"A man raised the money in the late '90s and
built a beet sugar factory in Michigan. Wise-
acres said it was nonsense. He gathered together
the money from his friends who would take a
chance with him. He not only built the sugar
factory (and there was never any doubt of his
ability to do that) but he made it pay. The next
year two more sugar factories were built, and
were financially successful. These were built by
private individuals of wealth, taking chances
in the face of cries of doubting bankers and
trust companies.

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 149

''Once demonstrated that the industry was a
sound one financially and then bankers and trust
companies would lend the new sugar companies
which were speedily organized a large part of
the necessary funds to construct and operate.

''The motor-car business was the same.

"When a few gentlemen followed me in my
vision of the possibilities of the business, the
banks and older business men (who in the main
were the banks) said, 'fools and their money soon
to be parted' — etc., etc.

"Private capital at first establishes an industry,
backs it through its troubles, and, if possible,
wins financial success when banks would not lend
a dollar of aid.

"The business once having proved to be prac-
ticable and financially successful, then do the
banks lend aid to its needs."

Such also was the experience of the greatest of
the many financial successes in the automobile
industry — the Ford Motor Company.

HOW BANKERS ARREST DEVELOPMENT

But "great banking houses" have not merely
failed to initiate industrial development; they
have definitely arrested development because to

150 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

them the creation of the trusts is largely due.
The recital in the ^Memorial addressed to the
President by the Investors' Guild in November,
1911, is significant:

"It is a well-known fact that modern trade
combinations tend strongl}' toward constancy of
process and products, and by their very nature
are opposed to new processes and new products
originated by independent inventors, and hence
tend to restrain competition in the development
and sale of patents and patent rights; and con-
sequently tend to discourage independent inven-
tive thought, to the great detriment of the nation,
and with injustice to inventors whom the Con-
stitution especially intended to encourage and
protect in their rights."

And more specific was the testimony of the

Engineering News:

"We are today something like five years behind
Germany in iron and steel metallurgy, and such
innovations as arc being introduced by our iron
and steel manufacturers are most of them merely
following the lead set by foreigners years ago.

"Wc do not believe this is because American

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 151

engineers are any less ingenious or original than
those of Europe, though they may indeed be
deficient in training and scientific education com-
pared with those of Germany. We beheve the
main cause is the wholesale consohdation which
has taken place in American industry. A huge
organization is too clumsy to take up the develop-
ment of an original idea. With the market
closely controlled and profits certain by following
standard methods, those who control our trusts
do not want the bother of developing anything
new.

"We instance metallurgy only by way of illus-
tration. There are plenty of other fields of indus-
try where exactly the same condition exists. We
are building the same machines and using the
same methods as a dozen years ago, and the real
advances in the art are being made by European
inventors and manufacturers."

To which President Wilson's stateijent may
be added:

"I am not saying that all invention had been
stopped by the growth of trusts, but I think it is
perfectly clear that invention in many fields has
been discouraged, that inventors have been

152 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

prevented from reaping the full fruits of their
ingenuity and industry, and that mankind has
been deprived of many comforts and con-
veniences, as well as the opportunity of buying
at lower prices.

"Do you know, have you had occasion to
learn, that there is no hospitality for invention,
now-a-days?"

TRUSTS AND FINANCIAL CONCENTRATION

The fact that industrial monopolies arrest
development is more serious even than the
direct burden imposed through extortionate
prices. But the most harm-bearing incident of
the trusts is their promotion of financial con-
centration. Industrial trusts feed the money
trust. Practically every trust created has de-
stroyed the financial independence of some
communities and of many properties; for it has
centered the financing of a large part of whole
lines of business in New York, and this usually
with one of a few banking houses. This is well
illustrated by the Steel Trust, which is a trust of
trusts; that is, the Steel Trust combines in one
huge holding company the trusts previously
formed in the different branches of the steel
business. Thus the Tube Trust combined 17

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 153

tube mills, located in 16 different cities, scat-
tered over 5 states and owned by 13 different
companies. The wire trust combined 19 mills;
the sheet steel trust 26; the bridge and structural
trust 27; and the tin plate trust 36; all scattered
similarly over many states. Finally these and
other companies were formed into the United
States Steel Corporation, combining 228 com-
panies in all, located in 127 cities and towns,
scattered over 18 states. Before the combina-
tions were effected, nearly every one of these
companies was owned largely by those who
managed it, and had been financed, to a large
extent, in the place, or in the state, in which it
was located. When the Steel Trust was formed
all these concerns came under one management.
Thereafter, the financing of each of these 228
corporations (and some which were later ac-
quired) had to be done through or with the
consent of J. P. Morgan & Co. That was the
greatest step in financial concentration ever taken.

STOCK EXCHANGE INCIDENTS

The organization of trusts has served in another
way to increase the power of the Money Trust.
Few of the independent concerns out of which
the trusts have been formed, were listed on the

154 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

New York Stock Exchange; and few of them had
financial offices in New York. Promoters of
large corporations, whose stock is to be held by
the public, and also investors, desire to have their
securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Under the rules of the Exchange, no security can
be so listed unless the corporation has a transfer
agent and registrar in New York City. Further-
more, banker-directorships have contributed
largely to the establishment of the financial
offices of the trusts in New York City. That
alone would tend to financial concentration.
But the listing of the stock enhances the power
of the Money Trust in another way. An in-
dustrial stock, once listed, frequently becomes
the subject of active speculation; and speculation
feeds the Money Trust indirectly in many ways.
It draws the money of the country to New York.
The New York bankers handle the loans of other
people's money on the Stock Exchange; and
members of the Stock Exchange receive large
amounts from commissions. For instance: There
are 5,084,952 shares of United States Steel com-
mon stock outstanding. But in the five years
ending December 31, 1912, speculation in that
stock was so extensive that there were sold on
the Exchange an average of 29,380,888 shares

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 155

a year; or nearly six times as much as there
is Steel common in existence. Except where
the transactions are by or for the brokers, sales
on the Exchange involve the payment of twenty-
five cents in commission for each share of stock
sold; that is, twelve and one-half cents by the
seller and twelve and one-half cents by the buyer.
Thus the commission from the Steel common
alone afforded a revenue averaging many millions
a year. The Steel preferred stock is also much
traded in; and there are 138 other industrials,
largely trusts, listed on the New York Stock
Exchange.

TEUST RAMIFICATIONS

But the potency of trusts as a factor in financial
concentration is manifested in still other ways;
notably through their ramifying operations.
This is illustrated forcibly by the General Electric
Company's control of water-power companies
which has now been disclosed in an able report of
the United States Bureau of Corporations:

*'The extent of the General Electric influence
is not fully revealed by its consolidated balance
sheet. A very large number of corporations are
connected with it through its subsidiaries and

156 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

through corporations controlled by these sub-
sidiaries or affiliated with them. There is a still
wider circle of influence due to the fact that
officers and directors of the General Electric
Co. and its subsidiaries are also officers or
directors of many other corporations, some of
whose securities are owned by the General
Electric Company.

''The General Electric Company holds in the
first place all the common stock in three security
holding companies : the United Electric Securities
Co., the Electrical Securities Corporation, and
the Electric Bond and Share Co. Directly and
through these corporations and their officers the
General Electric controls a large part of the
water power of the United States.

. . . ''The water-power companies in the
General Electric group are found in 18 States.
These 18 States have 2,325,757 commercial
horsepower developed or under construction,
and of this total the General Electric group in-
cludes 939,115 h. p. or 40.4 per cent. The
greatest amount of power controlled by the
companies in the General Electric group in any
State is found in Washington. This is followed
by New York, Pennsylvania, California, Mon-
tana, Iowa, Oregon, and Colorado. In five of

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 157

the States shown in the table the water-power
companies included in the General Electric group
control more than 50 per cent, of the com-
mercial power, developed and under construction.
The percentage of power in the States included in
the General Electric group ranges from a little
less than 2 per cent, in Michigan to nearly 80
per cent, in Pennsylvania. In Colorado they
control 72 per cent.; in New Hampshire 61 per
cent. ; in Oregon 58 per cent. ; and in Washington
55 per cent.

Besides the power developed and under con-
struction water-power concerns included in the
General Electric group own in the States shown
in the table 641,600 h. p. undeveloped."

This water power control enables the General
Electric group to control other public service
corporations :

"The water-power companies subject to
General Electric influence control the street
railways in at least 16 cities and towns; the
electric-light plants in 78 cities and towns; gas
plants in 19 cities and towns; and are affiliated
with the electric hght and gas plants in other
towns. Though many of these communities,
particularly those served with light only, are

158 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

small, several of them are the most important in
the States where these water-power companies
operate. The water-power companies in the
General Electric group own, control, or are
closely affiliated with, the street railways in
Portland and Salem, Ore.; Spokane, Wash.;
Great Falls, ]\Iont.; St. Louis, Mo.; Winona,
IMinn.; ^Milwaukee and Racine, Wis.; Elmira,
N. Y.; Ashcville and Raleigh, N. C., and other
relatively less important towns. The towns in
which the lighting plants (electric or gas) are
owned or controlled include Portland, Salem,
Astoria, and other towns in Oregon; Bellingham
and other towns in Washington; Butte, Great
Falls, Bozeman and other towns in Montana;
Leadville and Colorado Springs in Colorado;
St. Louis, Mo.; Milwaukee, Racine and several
small towns in Wisconsin; Hudson and Rens-
selaer, N. Y.; Detroit, Mich.; Asheville and
Raleigh, N. C; and in fact one or more towns in
practically every community where developed
water power is controlled by this group. In
addition to the public-service corporations thus
controlled by the water-power companies subject
to General Electric influence, there are numerous
public-service corporations in other municipalities
that purchase power from the hydroelectric

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS 159

developments controlled by or affiliated with the
General Electric Co. This is true of Denver,
Colo., which has already been discussed. In
Baltimore, Md., a water-power concern in the
General Electric group, namely, the Pennsylvania
Water & Power Co., sells 20,000 h. p. to the
Consolidated Gas, Electric Light & Power Co.,
which controls the entire light and power business
of that city. The power to operate all the
electric street railway systems of Buffalo, N. Y.,
and vicinity, involving a trackage of approxi-
mately 375 miles, is supplied through a subsidiary
of the Niagara Falls Power Co."

And the General Electric Company, through
the financing of public service companies, exer-
cises a Hke influence in communities where there
is no water power:

"It, or its subsidiaries, has acquired control of
or an interest in the public-service corporations
of numerous cities where there is no water-power
connection, and it is affiliated with still others by
virtue of common directors. . . . This vast
network of relationship between hydro-electric
corporations through prominent officers and
directors of the largest manufacturer of electrical
machinery and supplies in the United States is
highly significant. . . .

160 OTHER PEOPLE'S IMONEY

"It is possible that this relationship to such a
large number of strong financial concerns, through
common officers and directors, affords the General
Electric Co. an advantage that may place rivals
at a corresponding disadvantage. Whether or
not this great financial power has been used to
the particular disadvantage of any rival water-
power concern is not so important as the fact that
such power exists and that it might be so used at
any time."

THE SHERMAN LAW

The Money Trust cannot be broken, if we
allow its power to be constantly augmented.
To break the Money Trust, we must stop that
power at its source. The industrial trusts are
among its most effective feeders. Those which
are illegal should be dissolved. The creation of
new ones should be prevented. To this end the
Sherman Law should be supplemented both by
providing more efficient judicial machinery,
and by creating a commission with administra-
tive functions to aid in enforcing the law.
When that is done, another step will have been
taken toward securing the New Freedom. But
restrictive legislation alone will not suffice. We
should bear in mind the admonition with which

BIG MEN AND LITTLE BUSINESS IGl

the Commissioner of Corporations closes his
review of our water power development:

''There is . . . presented such a situation in
water powers and other public utilities as might
bring about at any time under a single manage-
ment the control of a majority of the developed
water power in the United States and similar
control over the public utilities in a vast number
of cities and towns, including some of the most
important in the country."

We should conserve all rights which the Fed-
eral Government and the States now have in
our natural resources, and there should be a
complete separation of our industries from rail-
roads and public utilities.

CHAPTER VIII

A CURSE OF BIGNESS

Bigness has been an important factor in the
rise of the ]\Ioney Trust: Big railroad systems,
Big industrial trusts, Big public service com-
panies; and as instruments of these Big banks
and Big trust companies. J. P. Morgan & Co.
(in their letter of defence to the Pujo Committee)
urge the needs of Big Business as the justification
for financial concentration. They declare that
what they euphemistically call "cooperation"
is "simply a further result of the necessity for
handling great transactions"; that "the country
obviously requires not only the larger individual
banks, but demands also that those banks shall
cooperate to perform efficiently the country's
business"; and that "a step backward along this
line would mean a halt in industrial progress
that would affect every wage-earner from the
Atlantic to the Pacific." The phrase "great
transactions" is used by the bankers apparently
as meaning large corporate security issues.

Leading bankers have undoul)tcdly cooperated

during the last 15 years in floating some very

\6i

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 163

large security issues, as well as many small ones.
But relatively few large issues were made
necessary by great improvements undertaken or
by industrial development. Improvements and
development ordinarily proceed slowly. For
them, even where the enterprise involves large
expenditures, a series of smaller issues is usually
more appropriate than single large ones. This is
particularly true in the East where the building
of new railroads has practically ceased. The
"great" security issues in which bankers have
cooperated were, with relatively few exceptions,
made either for the purpose of effecting com-
binations or as a consequence of such combina-
tions. Furthermore, the combinations which
made necessary these large security issues or
underwritings were, in most cases, either contrary
to existing statute law, or contrary to laws recom-
mended by the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion, or contrary to the laws of business efficiency.
So both the financial concentration and the
combinations which they have served were, in
the main, against the public interest. Size,
we are told, is not a crime. But size may, at
least, become noxious by reason of the means
through which it was attained or the uses to
which it is put. And it is size attained by

164 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

combination, instead of natural growth, which
has contributed so largely to our financial con-
centration. Let us examine a few cases:

THE HARRIMAN PACIFICS

J. P. Morgan & Co., in urging the "need of
large banks and the cooperation of bankers,"
said:

"The Attorney-General's recent approval of
the Union Pacific settlement calls for a single com-
mitment on the part of bankers of $126,000,000."

This §126,000,000 "commitment" was not
made to enable the Union Pacific to secure
capital. On the contrary it was a guaranty that
it would succeed in disposing of its Southern
Pacific stock to that amount. And when it had
disposed of that stock, it was confronted with the
serious problem — what to do with the proceeds?
This huge underwriting became necessary solely
because the Union Pacific had violated the
Sherman Law. It had acquired that amount of
Southern Pacific stock illegally; and the Supreme
Court of the United States finally decreed that
the illegality cease. This same illegal purchase
had been the occasion, twelve years earlier, of
another "groat transaction," — the issue of a
S 100,000,000 of Union Pacific bonds, which were

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 165

sold to provide funds for acquiring this Southern
Pacific and other stocks in violation of law.
Bankers ''cooperated" also to accomplish that.

UNION PACIFIC IMPROVEMENTS

The Union Pacific and its auxiliary lines (the
Oregon Short Line, the Oregon Railway and
Navigation and the Oregon-Washington Railroad)
made, in the fourteen years, ending June 30, 1912,
issues of securities aggregating $375,158,183 (of
which $46,500,000 were refunded or redeemed);
but the large security issues served mainly to sup-
ply funds for engaging in illegal combinations or
stock speculation. The extraordinary improve-
ments and additions that raised the Union Pacific
Railroad to a high state of efficiency were
provided mainly by the net earnings from the
operation of its railroads. And note how great
the improvements and additions were: Tracks
were straightened, grades were lowered, bridges
were rebuilt, heavy rails were laid, old equipment
was replaced by new; and the cost of these was
charged largely as operating expense. Additional
equipment was added, new lines were built
or acquired, increasing the system by 3524
miles of line, and still other improvements and
betterments were made and charged to capital

166 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

account. These expenditures aggi'egated S191,-
512,328. But it needed no "large security
issues" to provide the capital thus wisely ex-
pended. The net earnings from the operations
of these railroads were so large that nearly all
these improvements and additions could have
been made without issuing on the average more
than SI, 000,000 a year of additional securities for
"new money," and the company still could have
paid six per cent, dividends after 1906 (when that
rate was adopted). For while $13,679,452 a
year, on the average, was charged to Cost
of Road and Equipment, the surplus net
earnings and other funds would have yielded, on
the average, $12,750,982 a year available for
improvements and additions, without raising
money on new security issues.

HOW THE SECURITY PROCEEDS WERE SPENT

The 8375,000,000 securities (except to the
extent of about $13,000,000 required for im-
provements, and the amounts applied for refund-
ing and redemptions) were available to buy
stocks and bonds of other companies. And some
of the stocks so acquired were sold at large
profits, providing further sums to be employed
in stock purchases.

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 167

The $375,000,000 Union Pacific Lines security
issues, therefore, were not needed to supply
funds for Union Pacific improvements; nor did
these issues supply funds for the improvement of
any of the companies in which the Union Pacific
invested (except that certain amounts were
advanced later to aid in financing the Southern
Pacific). They served, substantially, no purpose
save to transfer the ownership of railroad stocks
from one set of persons to another.

Here are some of the principal investments:

1. $91,657,500, in acquiring and financing the Southern

Pacific.

2. $89,391,401, in acquiring the Northern Pacific stock and

stock of the Northern Securities Co.

3. $45,466,960, in acquiring Baltimore & Ohio stock.

4. $37,692,256, in acquiring Illinois Central stock.

5. $23,205,679, in acquiring New York Central stock.

6. $10,395,000, in acquiring Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe

stock.

7. $8,946,781, in acquiring Chicago & Alton stock.

8. $11,610,187, in acquiring Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul

stock.

9. $6,750,423, in acquiring Chicago & Northwestern stock.
10. $6,936,696, in acquiring Railroad Securities Co. stock

(Illinois Central stock.)

The immediate effect of these stock acquisi-
tions, as stated by the Interstate Commerce
Commission in 1907, was merely this;

168 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

"Mr. Harriman maj' journey by steamship
from New York to New Orleans, thence by rail
to San Francisco, across the Pacific Ocean to
China, and, returning by another route to the
United States, may go to Ogden by any one of
three rail lines, and thence to Kansas City or
Omaha, without leaving the deck or platform
of a carrier which he controls, and without
duplicating any part of his journey.

"He has further what appears to be a dominant
control in the Illinois Central Railroad running
directly north from the Gulf of Mexico to the
Great Lakes, parallel to the Mississippi River;
and two thousand miles west of the Mississippi
he controls the only line of railroad parallel to
the Pacific Coast, and running from the Colorado
River to the Mexican border. . . .

"The testimony taken at this hearing shows
that about fifty thousand square miles of terri-
tory in the State of Oregon, surrounded by the
lines of the Oregon Short Line Railroad Com-
pany, the Oregon Railroad and Navigation
Company, and the Southern Pacific Company,
is not developed. While the funds of those
companies which could be used for that purpose
arc being invested in stocks like the New York
Central and other lines having only a remote

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 169

relation to the territory in which the Union Pacific
System is located."

Mr. Harriman succeeded in becoming director
in 27 railroads with 39,354 miles of Hne; and they
extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific; from
the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

THE AFTERMATH

On September 9, 1909, less than twelve years
after Mr. Harriman first became a director in the
Union Pacific, he died from overwork at the age
of 61. But it was not death only that had
set a limit to his achievements. The multiplicity
of his interests prevented him from performing
for his other railroads the great services that had
won him a world-wide reputation as manager
and rehabilitator of the Union Pacific and the
Southern Pacific. Within a few months after
Mr. Harriman's death the serious equipment
scandal on the Illinois Central became public,
culminating in the probable suicide of one of the
vice-presidents of that company. The Chicago
& Alton (in the management of which Mr.
Harriman was prominent from 1899 to 1907, as
President, Chairman of the Board, or Executive
Committeeman), has never regained the pros-
perity it enjoyed before he and his ^.ssociates

170 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

acquired control. The P^re IMarquette has
passed again into receiver's hands. Long before
Mr. Harriman's death the Union Pacific had
disposed of its Northern Pacific stock, because
the Supreme Court of the United States declared
the Northern Securities Company illegal, and
dissolved the Northern Pacific-Great Northern
merger. Three years after his death, the Su-
preme Court of the United States ordered the
Union Pacific-Southern Pacific merger dissolved.
By a strange irony, the law has permitted the
Union Pacific to reap large profits from its illegal
transactions in Northern Pacific and Southern
Pacific stocks. But many other stocks held
"as investments" have entailed large losses.
Stocks in the Illinois Central and other com-
panies which cost the Union Pacific $129,894,-
991.72, had on November 15, 1913, a market
value of only $87,851,500; showing a shrinkage
of $42,043,491.72 and the average income from
them, while held, was only about 4.30 per cent,
on their cost.

A bankers' paradise

Kuhn, Loeb & Co. were the Union Pacific
bankers. It was in pursuance of a promise which
Mr. Jacob H. Schiff — the senior partner — had

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 171

given, pending the reorganization, that Mr.
Harriman first became a member of the Executive
Committee in 1897. Thereafter combinations
grew and crumbled, and there were vicissi-
tudes in stock speculations. But the investment
bankers prospered amazingly; and financial con-
centration proceeded without abatement. The
bankers and their associates received the com-
missions paid for purchasing the stocks which
the Supreme Court holds to have been acquired
illegally — and have retained them. The bankers
received commissions for underwriting the securi-
ties issued to raise the money with which to buy
the stocks which the Supreme Court holds to have
been illegally acquired, and have retained them.
The bankers received commissions paid for floating
securities of the controlled companies — while
they were thus controlled in violation of law — and
have, of course, retained them. Finally when,
after years, a decree is entered to end the illegal
combination, these same bankers are on hand
to perform the services of undertaker — and
receive further commissions for their banker-aid
in enabling the law-breaking corporation to end
its wrong doing and to comply with the decree of
the Supreme Court. And yet, throughout nearly
all this long period, both before and after Mr.

172 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Harriman's death, two partners in Kuhn, Loeb &
Co. were directors or members of the executive
committee of the Union Pacific; and as such
must be deemed responsible with others for the
illegal acts.

Indeed, these bankers have not only received
commissions for the underwritings of transactions
accomplished, though illegal; they have re-
ceived commissions also for merely agreeing to
underwrite a "great transaction" which the
authorities would not permit to be accomplished.
The $126,000,000 underwriting (that ''single
commitment on the part of bankers" to which
J. P. Morgan & Co. refer as being called for by
"the Attorney General's approval of the Union
Pacific settlement") never became effective;
because the Public Service Commission of Cali-
fornia refused to approve the terms of settlement.
But the Union Pacific, nevertheless, paid the
Kuhn Loeb Syndicate a large underwriting fee for
having been ready and willing "to serve," should
the opportunity arise: and another underwriting
commission was paid when the Southern Pacific
stock was finally distributed, with the approval
of Attorney General McRcynolds, under the
Court's decree. Thus the illegal purchase of
Southern Pacific stock yielded directly four

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 173

crops of commissions; two when it was acquired,
and two when it was disposed of. And during
the intervening period the illegally controlled
Southern Pacific yielded many more commissions
to the bankers. For the schedules filed with the
Pujo Committee show that Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
marketed, in addition to the Union Pacific
securities above referred to, $334,000,000 of
Southern Pacific and Central Pacific securities
between 1903 and 1911.

The aggregate amount of the commissions paid
to these bankers in connection with Union
Pacific-Southern Pacific transactions is not dis-
closed. It must have been very large; for not
only were the transactions ''great"; but the
commissions were liberal. The Interstate Com-
merce Commission finds that bankers received
about 5 per cent, on the purchase price for buying
the first 750,000 shares of Southern Pacific stock;
and the underwriting commission on the first
$100,000,000 Union Pacific bonds issued to make
that and other purchases was $5,000,000. How
large the two underwriting commissions were
which the Union Pacific paid in efTecting the
severance of this illegal merger, both the company
and the bankers have declined to disclose.
Furthermore the Interstate Commerce Com-

174 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

mission showed, clearly, while investigating the
Union Pacific's purchase of the Chicago & Alton
stock, that the bankers' profits were by no means
confined to commissions.

THE BURLINGTON

Such railroad combinations produce injury
to the public far more serious than the heavy tax
of bankers' commissions and profits. For in
nearly every case the absorption into a great
system of a theretofore independent railroad has
involved the loss of financial independence to
some community, property or men, who thereby
become subjects or satellites of the Money Trust.
The passing of tho Chicago, Burlington & Quincy,
in 1901, to the Morgan associates, presents a
striking example of this process.

After the Union Pacific acquired the Southern
Pacific stock in 1901, it sought control, also, of
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, — a most
prosperous railroad, having then 7912 miles of
line. The Great Northern and Northern Pacific
recognized that Union Pacific control of the
Burlington would exclude them from much of
Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska,
Iowa, and South Dakota. The two northern

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 175

roads, which were already closely allied with
each other and with J. P. Morgan & Co., there-
upon purchased for $215,227,000, of their joint
4 per cent, bonds, nearly all of the $109,324,000
(par value) outstanding Burlington stock. A
struggle with the Union Pacific ensued which
yielded soon to ''harmonious cooperation." The
Northern Securities Company was formed with
$400,000,000 capital, thereby merging the Great
Northern, the Northern Pacific and the Burling-
ton, and joining the Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, with
the Morgan-Hill interests. Obviously neither
the issue of $215,000,000 joint 4's, nor the issue
of the $400,000,000 Northern Securities stock
supplied one dollar of funds for improvements of,
or additions to, any of the four great railroad
systems concerned in these "large transactions."
The sole effect of issuing $615,000,000 of securities
was to transfer stock from one set of persons to
another. And the resulting ''harmonious co-
operation" was soon interrupted by the govern-
ment proceedings, which ended with the dissolu-
tion of the Northern Securities Company. But
the evil done outlived the combination. The
Burlington had passed forever from its inde-
pendent Boston owners to the Morgan allies,
who remain in control.

176 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

The Burlington — one of Boston's finest achieve-
ments— was the creation of John M. Forbes.
He was a builder; not a combiner, or banker, or
wizard of finance. He was a simple, hard-
working business man. He had been a merchant
in China at a time when China's trade was among
America's big business. He had been connected
with shipping and with manufactures. He had
the imagination of the great merchant; the
patience and perseverance of the great manu-
facturer; the courage of the sea-farer; and the
broad view of the statesman. Bold, but never
reckless; scrupulously careful of other people's
money, he was ready, after due weighing of
chances, to risk his own in enterprises promising
success. He was in the best sense of the term, a
great adventurer. Thus equipped, Mr. Forbes
entered, in 1852, upon those railroad enterprises
which later developed into the Chicago, Burling-
ton & Quincy. Largely with his own money
and that of friends who confided in him, he
built these railroads and carried them through the
panic of '57, when the "great banking houses"
of those days lacked courage to assume the
burdens of a struggling ill-constructed line,
staggering under financial difficulties.

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 177

Under his wise management, and that of the
men whom he trained, the little Bui-lington
became a great system. It was "built on honor,"
and managed honorably. It weathered every
other great financial crisis, as it did that of 1857.
It reached maturity without a reorganization or
the sacrifice of a single stockholder or bondholder.

Investment bankers had no place on the
Burhngton Board of Directors; nor had the
banker-practice, of being on both sides of a
bargain. ''I am unwilling," said Mr. Forbes,
early in his career, "to run the risk of having
the imputation of buying from a company in
which I am interested." About twenty years
later he made his greatest fight to rescue the
Burlington from the control of certain contractor-
directors, whom his biographer, Mr. Pearson,
describes as "persons of integrity, who had
conceived that in their twofold capacity as
contractors and directors they were fully able to
deal with themselves justly." Mr. Forbes
thought otherwise. The stockholders, whom he
had aroused, sided with him and he won.

Mr. Forbes was the pioneer among Boston
railroad-builders. His example and his success
inspired many others, for Boston was not lacking

178 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

then in men who were builders, though some
lacked his wisdom, and some his character. Her
enterprise and capital constructed, in large part,
the Union Pacific, the Atchison, the Mexican
Central, the Wisconsin Central, and 24 other
railroads in the West and South. One by one
these western and southern railroads passed out
of Boston control; the greater part of them into
the control of the JNIorgan allies. Before the
Burlington was surrendered, Boston had begun
to lose her dominion, even, over the railroads of
New England. In 1900 the Boston & Albany
was leased to the New York Central, — a Morgan
property; and a few years later, another Morgan
railroad — the New Haven — acquired control of
nearly every other transportation line in New
England. Now nothing is left of Boston's
railroad dominion in the West and South,
except the Eastern Kentucky Railroad — a line
36 miles long; and her control of the railroads of
Massachusetts is limited to the Grafton & Upton
with 19 miles of line and the Boston, Revere
Beach & Lynn, — a passenger road 13 miles long.

THE NEW HAVEN MONOPOLY

The rise of the New Haven Monopoly presents
another striking example of combination as a

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 179

developer of financial concentration; and it
illustrates also the use to which ''large security
issues" are put.

In 1892, when Mr. Morgan entered the New
Haven directorate, it was a very prosperous
little railroad with capital liabilities of $25,000,000
paying 10 per cent, dividends, and operating
508 miles of line. By 1899 the capitalization
had grown to $80,477,600, but the aggregate
mileage had also grown (mainly through merger
or leases of other lines) to 2017. Fourteen years
later, in 1913, when Mr. Morgan died and Mr.
Mellen resigned, the mileage was 1997, just
20 miles less than in 1899; but the capital lia-
bilities had increased to $425,935,000. Of course
the business of the railroad had grown largely
in those fourteen years; the road-bed was im-
proved, bridges built, additional tracks added,
and much equipment purchased; and for all this,
new capital was needed; and additional issues
were needed, also, because the company paid
out in dividends more than it earned. But
of the capital increase, over $200,000,000 was
expended in the acquisition of the stock or other
securities of some 121 other railroads, steam-
ships, street railway-, electric-light-, gas- and
water-companies. It was these outside proper-

180 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

ties, which made necessary the much discussed
$67,000,000, 6 per cent, bond issue, as well as
other large and expensive security issues. For
in these fourteen years the improvements on
the railroad including new equipment have cost,
on the average, only $10,000,000 a year.

THE NEW HAVEN BANKERS

Few, if any, of those 121 companies which the
New Haven acquired had, prior to their absorp-
tion by it, been financed by J. P. Morgan &
Co. The needs of the Boston & Maine and
Maine Central — the largest group — had, for
generations, been met mainly through their
own stockholders or through Boston banking
houses. No investment banker had been a
member of the Board of Directors of either of
those companies. The New York, Ontario &
Western — the next largest of the acquired rail-
roads— had been financed in New York, but by
persons apparently entirely independent of the
Morgan allies. The smaller Connecticut rail-
roads, now combined in the Central New Eng-
land, had been financed mainly in Connecticut,
or by independent New York bankers. The
financing of the street railway companies had
been done largely l)y individual financiers, or

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 181

by small and independent bankers in the states
or cities where the companies operate. Some of
the steamship companies had been financed by
their owners, some through independent bankers.
As the result of the absorption of these 121 com-
panies into the New Haven system, the financing
of all these railroads, steamship companies,
street railways, and other corporations, was
made tributary to J. P. Morgan & Co.; and the
independent bankers were eliminated or became
satellites. And this financial concentration was
proceeded with, although practically every one
of these 121 companies was acquired by the New
Haven in violation either of the state or federal
law, or of both. Enforcement of the Sherman
Act will doubtless result in dissolving this
unwieldy illegal combination.

THE COAL MONOPOLY

Proof of the ''cooperation" of the anthracite
railroads is furnished by the ubiquitous presence
of George F. Baker on the Board of Directors
of the Reading, the Jersey Central, the Lacka-
wanna, the Lehigh, the Erie, and the New York,
Susquehanna & Western railroads, which to-
gether control nearly all the unmined anthracite
as well as the actual tonnage. These roads have

182 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

been an important factor in the development of
the Money Trust. They are charged by the De-
partment of Justice with fundamental violations
both of the Sherman Law and of the Commodity
clause of the Hepburn Act, which prohibits a
railroad from carrying, in interstate trade, any
commodity in which it has an interest, direct or
indirect. Nearly every large issue of securities
made in the last 14 years by any of these rail-
roads (except the Erie), has been in connection
with some act of combination. The combina-
tion of the anthracite railroads to suppress the
construction, through the Temple Iron Company,
of a competing coal road, has already been de-
clared illegal by the Supreme Court of the United
States. And in the bituminous coal field — the
Kanawha District — the United States Circuit
Court of Appeals has recently decreed that a
similar combination by the Lake Shore, the
Chesapeake & Ohio, and the Hocking Valley,
be dissolved.

OTHER RAILROAD COMBINATIONS

The cases of the Union Pacific and of the New
Haven are typical — not excoi)tional. Our rail-
road history presents numerous instances of large
security issues made wholly or mainly to effect

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 183

combinations. Some of these combinations have
been proper as a means of securing natural
feeders or extensions of main lines. But far more
of them have been dictated by the desire to
suppress active or potential competition; or by-
personal ambition or greed; or by the mistaken
belief that efficiency grows with size.

Thus the monstrous combination of the Rock
Island and the St. Louis and San Francisco with
over 14,000 miles of line is recognized now to
have been obviously inefficient. It was severed
voluntarily; but, had it not been, must have
crumbled soon from inherent defects, if not as a
result of proceedings under the Sherman law.
Both systems are suffering now from the effects
of this unwise combination; the Frisco, itself
greatly overcombined, has paid the penalty in
receivership. The Rock Island — a name once
expressive of railroad efficiency and stability — •
has, through its excessive recapitalizations and
combinations, become a football of speculators,
and a source of great apprehension to confiding
investors. The combination of the Cincinnati,
Hamilton and Dayton, and the Pdre Marquette
led to several receiverships.

There are, of course, other combinations
which have not been disastrous to the owners of

184 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

the railroads. But the fact that a railroad
combination has not been disastrous does not
necessarily justify it. The evil of the concentra-
tion of power is obvious; and as combination
necessarily involves such concentration of power,
the burden of justifying a combination should
be placed upon those who seek to effect it.

For instance, what public good has been
subserved by allowing the Atlantic Coast Line
Railroad Company to issue S50,000,000 of securi-
ties to acquire control of the Louisville & Nash-
ville Railroad — a widely extended, self-sufficient
system of 5000 miles, which, under the wise
management of President ^Milton H. Smith had
prospered continuously for many years before the
acquisition; and which has gross earnings nearly
twice as large as those of the Atlantic Coast Line.
The legality of this combination has been
recently challenged by Senator Lea; and an
investigation by the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission has been ordered.

THE PENNSYLVANIA

The reports from the Pennsylvania suggest the
inquiry whether even this generally well-managed
railroad is not suffering from excessive bigness.
After 1898 it, too, bought, in large amounts,

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 185

stocks in other railroads, including the Chesa-
peake & Ohio, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the
Norfolk & Western. In 1906 it sold all its
Chesapeake & Ohio stock, and a majority of its
Baltimore & Ohio and Norfolk & Western
holdings. Later it reversed its policy and re-
sumed stock purchases, acquiring, among others,
more Norfolk & Western and New York, New
Haven & Hartford; and on Dec. 31, 1912, held
securities valued at $331,909,154.32; of which,
however, a large part represents Pennsylvania
System securities. These securities (mostly
stocks) constitute about one-third of the total
assets of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The in-
come on these securities in 1912 averaged only
4.30 per cent, on their valuation, while the Penn-
sylvania paid 6 per cent, on its stock. But the
cost of carrying these foreign stocks is not limited
to the difference between this income and outgo.
To raise money on these stocks the Pennsylvania
had to issue its own securities; and there is such
a thing as an over-supply even of Pennsylvania
securities. Over-supply of any stock depresses
market values, and increases the cost to the Pen-
nsylvania of raising new money. Recently came
the welcome announcement of the management
that it will dispose of its stocks in the anthracite

186 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

coal mines; and it is intimated that it will divest
itself also of other holdings in companies (like
the Cambria Steel Company) extraneous to the
business of railroading. This policy should be
extended to include the disposition also of all
stock in other railroads (like the Norfolk & West-
ern, the Southern Pacific and the New Haven)
which are not a part of the Pennsylvania System.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Six years ago the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, after investigating the Union Pacific
transaction above referred to, recommended
legislation to remedy the evils there disclosed.
Upon concluding recently its investigation of the
New Haven, the Commission repeated and
amplified those recommendations, saying:

"No student of the railroad problem can
doubt that a most prolific source of financial
disaster and complication to railroads in the past
has been the desire and ability of railroad man-
agers to engage in enterprises outside the legiti-
mate operation of their railroads, especially by
the acquisition of other railroads and their
securities. The evil which results, first, to the
investing public, and, finally, to the general
public, cannot be corrected after the transaction

A CURSE OF BIGNESS 187

has taken place; it can be easily and effectively
prohibited. In our opinion the following propo-
sitions lie at the foundation of all adequate regu-
lation of interstate railroads:

1. Every interstate railroad should be pro-
hibited from spending money or incurring liability
or acquiring property not in the operation of its
railroad or in the legitimate improvement, ex-
tension, or development of that railroad.

2. No interstate railroad should be permitted to
lease or purchase any other railroad, nor to acquire
the stocks or securities of any other railroad,
nor to guarantee the same, directl or indirectly,
without the approval of the federal government.

3. No stocks or bonds should be issued by an
interstate railroad except for the purposes sanc-
tioned in the two preceding paragraphs, and
none should be issued without the approval of the
federal government.

It may be unwise to attempt to specify the
price at which and the manner in which railroad
stocks and securities shall be disposed of; but it is
easy and safe to define the purpose for which they
may be issued and to confine the expenditure of
the money realized to that purpose."

These recommendations are in substantial
accord with those adopted by the National

188 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Association of Railway Commissioners. They
should be enacted into law. And they should be
supplemented by amendments of the Commodity
Clause of the Hepburn Act, so that:

1. Railroads will be effectually prohibited from
owning stock in corporations whose products
they transport;

2. Such corporations will be prohibited from
owning important stockholdings in railroads; and

3. Holding companies will be prohibited from
controlling, as does the Reading, both a rail-
road and corporations whose commodities it
transports.

If laws such as these are enacted and duly
enforced, we shall be protected from a recurrence
of tragedies like the New Haven, of domestic
scandals like the Chicago and Alton, and of
international ones like the Frisco. We shall also
escape from that inefficiency which is attendant
upon excessive size. But what is far more im-
portant, we shall, by such legislation, remove a
potent factor in financial concentration. De-
centralization will begin. The liberated smaller
units will find no difficulty in financing their
needs without bowing the knee to money lords.
And a long step will have been taken toward
attainment of the New Freedom.

CHAPTER IX
THE FAILURE OF BANKER-MANAGEMENT

There is not one moral, but many, to be drawn
from the Decline of the New Haven and the Fall
of Mellen. That history offers texts for many
sermons. It illustrates the Evils of Monopoly,
the Curse of Bigness, the Futility of Lying, and
the Pitfalls of Law-Breaking. But perhaps the
most impressive lesson that it should teach to
investors is the failure of banker-management.

BANKER CONTROL

For years J. P. Morgan & Co. were the fis-
cal agents of the New Haven. For years Mr.
Morgan was the director of the Company. He
gave to that property probably closer personal
attention than to any other of his many interests.
Stockholders' meetings are rarely interesting or
important; and few indeed must have been the
occasions when Mr. Morgan attended any stock-
holders' meeting of other companies in which he
was a director. But it was his habit, when in

189

190 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

America, to be present at meetings of the New
Haven. In 1907, when the policy of monopolistic
expansion was first challenged, and again at the
meeting in 1909 (after Massachusetts had un-
wisely accorded its sanction to the Boston &
Maine merger), Mr. IMorgan himself moved
the large increases of stock which were unani-
mously voted. Of course, he attended the
important directors' meetings. His will was
law. President Mellen indicated this in his
statement before Interstate Commerce Com-
missioner Prouty, while discussing the New
York, Westchester & Boston — the railroad with-
out a terminal in New York, which cost the
New Haven $1,500,000 a mile to acquire, and
was then costing it, in operating deficits and
interest charges, $100,000 a month to run:

"I am in a very embarrassing position, Mr.
Commissioner, regarding the New York, West-
chester & Boston. I have never been enthusias-
tic or at all optimistic of its being a good invest-
ment for our company in the present, or in the
immediate future; but people in whom I had
greater confidence than 1 have in myself thought
it was wise and desirable; I yielded my judgment;
indeed, I don't know that it would have made
much difTerence whether I yielded or not."

BANKER-MANAGEMENT 191

THE bankers' responsibility

Bankers are credited with being a conservative
force in the community. The tradition hngers
that they are preeminently "safe and sane." And
yet, the most grievous fault of this banker-
managed railroad has been its financial reckless-
ness— a fault that has already brought heavy
losses to many thousands of small investors
throughout New England for whom bankers are
supposed to be natural guardians. In a com-
munity where its railroad stocks have for gen-
erations been deemed absolutely safe invest-
ments, the passing of the New Haven and of the
Boston & Maine dividends after an unbroken
dividend record of generations comes as a
disaster.

This disaster is due mainly to enterprises out-
side the legitimate operation of these railroads;
for no railroad company has equaled the New
Haven in the quantity and extravagance of its
outside enterprises. But it must be remembered,
that neither the president of the New Haven nor
any other railroad manager could engage in such
transactions without the sanction of the Board
of Directors. It is the directors, not Mr. Mellen,
who should bear the responsibility.

192 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Close scrutiny of the transactions discloses no
justification. On the contrary, scrutiny serves
only to make more clear the gravity of the errors
committed. Not merely were recklessly ex-
travagant acquisitions made in mad pursuit of
monopoly; but the financial judgment, the finan-
ciering itself, was conspicuously bad. To pay
for property several times what it is worth, to
engage in grossly unwise enterprises, are errors
of which no conservative directors should be
found guilty; for perhaps the most important
function of directors is to test the conclusions
and curb by calm counsel the excessive zeal of
too ambitious managers. But while we have no
right to expect from bankers exceptionally good
judgment in ordinary business matters; we do
have a right to expect from them prudence,
reasonably good financiering, and insistence upon
straightforward accounting. And it is just the
lack of these qualities in the New Haven man-
agement to which the severe criticism of the
Interstate Commerce Commission is particularly
directed.

Conmissioner Prouty calls attention to the
vast increase of capitalization. During the nine
years beginning July 1, 1903, the capital of the
New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad

BANKER-MANAGEMENT 193

Company itself increased from $93,000,000 to
about $417,000,000 (excluding premiums). That
fact alone would not convict the management
of reckless financiering; but the fact that so
little of the new capital was represented by stock
might well raise a question as to its conservative-
ness. For the indebtedness (including guaran-
ties) was increased over twenty times (from
about $14,000,000 to $300,000,000), while the
stock outstanding in the hands of the public
was not doubled ($80,000,000 to $158,000,000).
Still, in these days of large things, even such
growth of corporate liabilities might be con-
sistent with "safe and sane management."

But what can be said in defense of the finan-
cial judgment of the banker-management under
which these two railroads find themselves con-
fronted, in the fateful year 1913, with a most
disquieting floating indebtedness? On March
31, the New Haven had outstanding $43,000,000
in short-time notes; the Boston & Maine had
then outstanding $24,500,000, which have been
increased since to $27,000,000; and additional
notes have been issued by several of its sub-
sidiary lines. Mainly to meet its share of these
loans, the New Haven, which before its great
expansion could sell at par 3 1/2 per cent, bonds

194 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

convertible into stock at S150 a share, was so
eager to issue at par $67,500,000 of its 6 per
cent. 20-3'ear bonds convertible into stock as to
agree to pay J. P. ]M organ & Co. a 2 1/2 per
cent. underwTiting commission. True, money
was ''tight" then. But is it not very bad
financiering to be so unprepared for the "tight"
money market which had been long expected?
Indeed, the New Haven's management, particu-
larly, ought to have avoided such an error; for
it committed a similar one in the "tight" money
market of 1907-1908, when it had to sell at par
§39,000,000 of its 6 per cent. 40-year bonds.

These huge short-time borrowings of the Sys-
tem were not due to unexpected emergencies or
to their monetary conditions. They were of
gradual growth. On June 30, 1910, the two
companies owed in short-term notes only $10,-
180,364; by June 30, 1911, the amount had grown
to $30,759,959; by June 30, 1912, to $45,395,000;
and in 1913 to over $70,000,000. Of course the
rate of interest on the loans increased also
very largely. And these loans were incurred
unnecessarily. They represent, in the main,
not improvements on the New Haven or on the
Boston & Maine Railroads, but money borrowed
either to pay for stocks in other companies which

BANKER-MANAGEMENT 195

these companies could not afford to buy, or to
pay dividends which had not been earned.

In five years out of the last six the New Haven
Railroad has, on its own showing, paid dividends
in excess of the year's earnings; and the annual
deficits disclosed would have been much larger
if proper charges for depreciation of equipment
and of steamships had been made. In each of the
last three years, during which the New Haven
had absolute control of the Boston & Maine,
the latter paid out in dividends so much in
excess of earnings that before April, 1913, the
surplus accumulated in earlier years had been
converted into a deficit.

Surely these facts show, at least, an extra-
ordinary lack of financial prudence.

WHY BANKER-MANAGEMENT FAILED

Now, how can the failure of the banker-
management of the New Haven be explained?

A few have questioned the ability; a few the
integrity of the bankers. Commissioner Prouty
attributed the mistakes made to the Company's
pursuit of a transportation monopoly.

''The reason," says he, "is as apparent as the
fact itself. The present management of that
Company started out with the purpose of con-

196 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

trolling the transportation facilities of New
England. In the accomplishment of that pur-
pose it bought what must be had and paid what
must be paid. To this purpose and its attempted
execution can be traced every one of these finan-
cial misfortunes and derelictions."

But it still remains to find the cause of the
bad judgment exercised by the eminent banker-
management in entering upon and in carrying
out the policy of monopoly. For there were as
grave errors in the execution of the policy of
monopoly as in its adoption. Indeed, it was the
aggregation of important errors of detail which
compelled first the reduction, then the passing
of dividends and which ultimately impaired the
Company's credit.

The failure of the banker-management of the
New Haven cannot be explained as the shortr
comings of individuals. The failure was not
accidental. It was not exceptional. It was
the natural result of confusing the functions of
banker and business man.

UNDIVIDED LOYALTY

The banker should be detached from the busi-
ness for which he performs the banking service.
This detachment is desirable, in the first place,

BANKER-MANAGEMENT 197

in order to avoid conflict of interest. The re-
lation of banker-directors to corporations which
they finance has been a subject of just criti-
cism. Their conflicting interests necessarily pre-
vent single-minded devotion to the corporation.
When a banker-director of a railroad decides as
railroad man that it shall issue securities, and
then sells them to himself as banker, fixing the
price at which they are to be taken, there is
necessarily grave danger that the interests of
the railroad may suffer — suffer both through is-
suing of securities which ought not to be issued,
and from selling them at a price less favorable
to the company than should have been obtained.
For it is ordinarily impossible for a banker-
director to judge impartially between the cor-
poration and himself. Even if he succeeded in
being impartial, the relation would not conduce
to the best interests of the company. The
best bargains are made when buyer and seller
are represented by different persons.

DETACHMENT AN ESSENTIAL

But the objection to banker-management does
not rest wholly, or perhaps mainly, upon the
importance of avoiding divided loyalty. A com-
plete detachment of the banker from the corpo-

198 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

ration is necessary in order to secure for the
railroad the benefit of the clearest financial
judgment; for the banker's judgment will be
necessarily clouded by participation in the
management or by ultimate responsibility for
the policy actually pursued. It is outside finan-
cial advice which the railroad needs.

Long ago it was recognized that "a man who
is his own lawyer has a fool for a client." The
essential reason for this is that soundness of
judgment is easily obscured by self-interest.
Similarly, it is not the proper function of the
banker to construct, purchase, or operate rail-
roads, or to engage in industrial enterprises.
The proper function of the banker is to give to
or to withhold credit from other concerns; to
purchase or to refuse to purchase securities from
other concerns; and to sell securities to other
customers. The proper exercise of this function
demands that the banker should be wholly de-
tached from the concern whose credit or securi-
ties are under consideration. His decision to
grant or to withhold credit, to purchase or not
to purchase securities, involves passing judg-
ment on the efficiency of the management or the
soundness of the enterprise; and he ought not
to occupy a position where in so doing he is

BANKER-MANAGEMENT 199

passing judgment on himself. Of course de-
tachment does not imply lack of knowledge.
The banker should act only with full knowledge,
just as a lawyer should act only with full knowl-
edge. The banker who undertakes to make
loans to or purchase securities from a railroad
for sale to his other customers ought to have aa
full knowledge of its affairs as does its legal
adviser. But the banker should not be, in any
sense, his own client. He should not, in the ca-
pacity of banker, pass judgment upon the wisdom
of his own plans or acts as railroad man.

Such a detached attitude on the part of the
banker is demanded also in the interest of his
other customers — the purchasers of corporate
securities. The investment banker stands to-
ward a large part of his customers in a posi-
tion of trust, which should be fully recognized.
The small investors, particularly the women, who
are holding an ever-increasing proportion of our
corporate securities, commonly buy on the
recommendation of their bankers. The small
investors do not, and in most cases cannot, as-
certain for themselves the facts on which to base
a proper judgment as to the soundness of securi-
ties offered. And even if these investors were
furnished with the facts, they lack the business

200 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

experience essential to forming a proper judg-
ment. Such investors need and are entitled to
have the bankers' advice, and obviously their
unbiased advice; and the advice cannot be un-
biased where the banker, as part of the corpora-
tion's management, has participated in the crea-
tion of the securities which are the subject of
sale to the investor.

Is it conceivable that the great house of Mor-
gan would have aided in providing the New
Haven with the hundreds of millions so un-
wisely expended, if its judgment had not been
clouded by participation in the New Haven's
management?

CHAPTER X
THE INEFFICIENCY OF THE OLIGARCHS

We must break the Money Trust or the Money-
Trust will break us.

The Interstate Commerce Commission said
in its report on the most disastrous of the recent
wrecks on the New Haven Railroad:

''On this directorate were and are men whom
the confiding public recognize as magicians in
the art of finance, and wizards in the construc-
tion, operation, and consolidation of great sys-
tems of railroads. The public therefore rested
secure that with the knowledge of the railroad
art possessed by such men investments and
travel should both be safe. Experience has
shown that this reliance of the public was not
justified as to either finance or safety."

This failure of banker-management is not
surprising. The surprise is that men should
have supposed it would succeed. For banker-
management contravenes the fundamental laws

201

202 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

of human limitations: First, that no man can
serve two masters; second, that a man cannot
at the same time do many things well.

SEEMING SUCCESSES

There are numerous seeming exceptions to
these rules; and a relatively few real ones.
Of course, many banker-managed properties
have been prosperous; some for a long time,
at the expense of the public; some for a shorter
time, because of the impetus attained before
they were banker-managed. It is not difficult
to have a large net income, where one has the
field to oneself, has all the advantages privilege
can give, and may "charge all the traffic will
bear." And even in competitive business the
success of a long-established, well-organized busi-
ness with a widely extended good-will, must con-
tinue for a considerable time; especially if but-
tressed by intertwined relations constantly giving
it the preference over competitors. The real
test of efficiency comes when success has to be
struggled for; when natural or legal conditions
limit the charges which may be made for the
goods sold or service rendered. Our banker-
managed railroads have recently been subjected
to such a test, and they have failed to pass it.

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 203

"It is only," says Goethe, "when working within
limitations, that the master is disclosed."

WHY OLIGARCHY FAILS

Banker-management fails, partly because the
private interest destroys soundness of judgment
and undermines loyalty. It fails partly, also,
because banker directors are led by their occu-
pation (and often even by the mere fact of their
location remote from the operated properties)
to apply a false test in making their decisions.
Prominent in the banker-director mind is always
this thought: *'What will be the probable effect
of our action upon the market value of the com-
pany's stock and bonds, or, indeed, generally
upon stock exchange values?" The stock market
is so much a part of the investment-banker's
life, that he cannot help being affected by this
consideration, however disinterested he may be.
The stock market is sensitive. Facts are often
misinterpreted "by the street" or by investors.
And with the best of intentions, directors sus-
ceptible to such influences are led to unwise
decisions in the effort to prevent misinterpreta-
tions. Thus, expenditures necessary for main-
tenance, or for the ultimate good of a property
are often deferred by banker-directors, because

204 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

of the belief that the making of them now,
would (by showing smaller net earnings), create
a bad, and even false, impression on the market.
Dividends are paid which should not be, because
of the efifect which it is believed reduction or
suspension would have upon the market value of
the company's securities. To excerise a sound
judgment in the difficult affairs of business is,
at best, a delicate operation. And no man can
successfully perform that function whose mind
is diverted, however innocently, from the study
of, "what is best in the long run for the company
of which I am director?'' The banker-director
is peculiarly liable to such distortion of judgment
by reason of his occupation and his environment.
But there is a further reason why, ordinarily,
banker-management must fail.

THE ELEMENT OF TIME

The banker, with his multiplicity of interests,
cannot ordinarily give the time essential to proper
supervision and to acquiring that knowledge of
the facts necessary to the exercise of sound judg-
ment. The Century Dictionary tells us that a
Director is "one who directs; one who guides,
superintends, governs and manages." Real ef-
ficiency in any business in which conditions are

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 205

ever changing must ultimately depend, in large
measure, upon the correctness of the judgment
exercised, almost from day to day, on the im-
portant problems as they arise. And how can
the leading bankers, necessarily engrossed in the
problems of their own vast private businesses,
get time to know and to correlate the facts con-
cerning so many other complex businesses?
Besides, they start usually with ignorance of the
particular business which they are supposed to
direct. When the last paper was signed which
created the Steel Trust, one of the lawyers (as
Mr. Perkins frankly tells us) said: ''That signa-
ture is the last one necessary to put the Steel
industry, on a large scale, into the hands of men
who do not know anything about it."

AVOCATIONS OF THE OLIGARCHS

The New Haven System is not a railroad, but
an agglomeration of a railroad plus 121 separate
corporations, control of which was acquired
by the New Haven after that railroad attained
its full growth of about 2000 miles of line. In
administering the railroad and each of the prop-
erties formerly managed through these 122 sep-
arate companies, there must arise from time to
time difficult questions on which the directors

206 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

should pass judgment. The real managing di-
rectors of the New Haven system during the
decade of its decline were: J. Pierpont Morgan,
George F. Baker, and William Rockefeller.
Mr. Morgan was, until his death in 1913, the
head of perhaps the largest banking house in
the world. Mr. Baker was, until 1909, Presi-
dent and then Chairman of the Board of Di-
rectors of one of America's leading banks (the
First National of New York), and I\Ir. Rocke-
feller was, until 1911, President of the Standard
Oil Company. Each was well advanced in
years. Yet each of these men, besides the duties
of his own vast business, and important private
interests, undertook to ''guide, superintend,
govern and manage," not only the New Haven
but also the following other corporations, some
of which were similarly complex: Mr. Mor-
gan, 48 corporations, including 40 railroad cor-
porations, with at least 100 subsidiary com-
panies, and 16,000 miles of line; 3 banks and
trust or insurance companies; 5 industrial and
public-service companies. Mr. Baker, 48 cor-
porations, including 15 railroad corporations,
with at least 158 subsidiaries, and 37,400 miles
of track; 18 banks, and trust or insurance com-
panies; 15 public-service corporations and in-

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 207

dustrial concerns. Mr. Rockefeller, 37 corpora-
tions, including 23 railroad corporations with
at least 117 subsidiary companies, and 26,400
miles of line; 5 banks, trust or insurance com-
panies; 9 public service companies and industrial
concerns.

SUBSTITUTES

It has been urged that in view of the heavy
burdens which the leaders of finance assume in
directing Business- America, we should be patient
of error and refrain from criticism, lest the lead-
ers be deterred from continuing to perform this
public service. A very respectable Boston daily
said a few days after Commissioner McChord's
report on the North Haven wreck:

"It is believed that the New Haven pillory
repeated with some frequency will make the part
of railroad director quite undesirable and hard
to fill, and more and more avoided by responsible
men. Indeed it may even become so that men
will have to be paid a substantial salary to com-
pensate them in some degree for the risk involved
in being on the board of directors."

But there is no occasion for alarm. The
American people have as little need of oligarchy

208 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

in business as in politics. There are thousands
of men in America who could have performed
for the New Haven stockholders the task of
one ''who guides, superintends, governs and
manages," better than did ]\Ir. IMorgan. Mr.
Baker and IVIr. Rockefeller. For though pos-
sessing less native abilit}^ even the average
business man would have done better than they,
because working under proper conditions. There
is great strength in serving with singleness of
purpose one master only. There is great strength
in having time to give to a business the atten-
tion which its difficult problems demand. And
tens of thousands more Americans could be ren-
dered competent to guide our important busi-
nesses. Liberty is the greatest developer. Herod-
otus tells us that while the tyrants ruled, the
Athenians were no better fighters than their
neighbors; but when freed, they immediately
surpassed all others. If industrial democracy —
true cooperation — should be substituted for in-
dustrial absolutism, there would be no lack of
industrial leaders.

England's big business

England, too, has big business. But her big
business is the Cooperative Wholesale Society,

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 209

with a wonderful story of 50 years of beneficent
growth. Its annual turnover is now about
$150,000,000 — an amount exceeded by the sales
of only a few American industrials; an amount
larger than the gross receipts of any Amer-
ican railroad, except the Pennsylvania and
the New York Central systems. Its business
is very diversified, for its purpose is to supply
the needs of its members. It includes that of
wholesale dealer, of manufacturer, of grower,
of miner, of banker, of insurer and of carrier.
It operates the biggest flour mills and the biggest
shoe factory in all Great Britain. It manufac-
tures woolen cloths, all kinds of men's, women's
and children's clothing, a dozen kinds of pre-
pared foods, and as many household articles.
It operates creameries. It carries on every
branch of the printing business. It is now
buying coal lands. It has a bacon factory in
Denmark, and a tallow and oil factory in Aus-
tralia. It grows tea in Ceylon. And through
all the purchasing done by the Society runs this
general principle: Go direct to the source of
production, whether at home or abroad, so as
to save commissions of middlemen and agents.
Accordingly, it has buyers and warehouses in
the United States, Canada, Australia, Spain, Den-

210 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

mark and Sweden. It owns steamers plying
between Continental and English ports. It has
an important banking depai'tment; it insm-es the
property and person of its members. Every
one of these departments is conducted in com-
petition with the most efficient concerns in their
respective lines in Great Britain. The Coopera-
tive Wholesale Society makes its purchases, and
manufactures its products, in order to supply
the 1399 local distributive, cooperative societies
scattered over all England; but each local society
is at liberty to buy from the wholesale society,
or not, as it chooses; and they buy only if
the Cooperative Wholesale sells at market prices.
This the Cooperative actually does; and it is
able besides to return to the local a fair dividend
on its purchases.

INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

Now, how are the directors of this great busi-
ness chosen? Not by England's leading bankers,
or other notabilities, supposed to possess unusual
wisdom; but democratically, by all of the people
interested in the operations of the Society. And
the number of such persons who have directly or
indirectly a voice in the selection of the directors
of the English Cooperative Wholesale Society is

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 211

2,750,000. For the directors of the Wholesale
Society are elected by vote of the delegates of the
1399 retail societies. And the delegates of the
retail societies are, in turn, selected by the mem-
bers of the local societies; — that is, by the con-
sumers, on the principle of one man, one vote,
regardless of the amount of capital contributed.
Note what kind of men these industrial democrats
select to exercise executive control of their vast
organization. Not all-wise bankers or their dum-
mies, but men who have risen from the ranks of
cooperation; men who, by conspicuous service
in the local societies have won the respect and
confidence of their fellows. The directors are
elected for one year only; but a director is rarely
unseated. J. T. W. Mitchell was president of
the Society continuously for 21 years. Thirty-
two directors are selected in this manner. Each
gives to the business of the Society his whole
time and attention; and the aggregate salaries
of the thirty-two is less than that of many a
single executive in American corporations; for
these directors of England's big business serve
each for a salary of about $1500 a year.

The Cooperative Wholesale Society of England
is the oldest and largest of these institutions.
But similar wholesale societies exist in 15 other

212 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

countries. The Scotch Society (which William
Maxwell has served most efficiently as President
for thirty years at a salary never exceeding $38
a week) has a turn-over of more than $50,000,000
a year.

A REMEDY FOR TRUSTS

Albert Sonnichsen, General Secretary of the
Cooperative League, tells in the American Review
of Reviews for April, 1913, how the Swedish
Wholesale Society curbed the Sugar Trust; how
it crushed the Margerine Combine (compelling
it to dissolve after having lost 2,300,000 crowns
in the struggle); and how in Switzerland the
Wholesale Society forced the dissolution of the
Shoe Manufacturers Association. He tells also
this memorable incident:

"Six years ago, at an international congress
in Cremona, Dr. Hans Miillcr, a Swiss delegate,
presented a resolution by which an international
wholesale society should be created. Luigi Luz-
zatti, Italian Minister of State and an ardent
member of the movement, was in the chair.
Those who were present say Luzzatti paused, his
eyes lighted up, then, dramatically raising his
hand, he said: *Dr. Miiller proposes to the assem-

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 213

bly a great idea — that of opposing to the great
trusts, the Rockefellers of the world, a world-
wide cooperative alliance which shall become so
powerful as to crush the trusts. ' "

COOPERATION IN AMERICA

America has no Wholesale Cooperative Society-
able to grapple with the trusts. But it has some
very strong retail societies, like the Tamarack
of Michigan, which has distributed in dividends
to its members $1,144,000 in 23 years. The
recent high cost of living has greatly stimulated
interest in the cooperative movement; and John
Graham Brooks reports that we have already
about 350 local distributive societies. The move-
ment toward federation is progressing. There
are over 100 cooperative stores in Minnesota,
Wisconsin and other Northwestern states, many
of which were organized by or through the zealous
work of Mr. Tousley and his associates of the
Right Relationship League and are in some ways
affihated. In New York City 83 organizations
are affihated with the Cooperative League. In
New Jersey the societies have federated into the
American Cooperative Alliance of Northern New
Jersey. In California, long the seat of effective
cooperative work, a central management com-

2U OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

mittee is developing. And progressive Wisconsin
has recently legislated wisely to develop coopera-
tion throughout the state.

Among our farmers the interest in cooperation
is especially keen. The federal government has
just established a separate bui-eau of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture to aid in the study, devel-
opment and introduction of the best methods
of cooperation in the working of farms, in buj'ing,
and in distribution; and special attention is now
being given to farm credits — a field of coopera-
tion in which Continental Europe has achieved
complete success, and to which David Lubin,
America's delegate to the International Institute
of Agriculture at Rome, has, among others, done
much to direct our attention.

people's savings banks

The German farmer has achieved democratic
banking. The 13,000 little cooperative credit
associations, with an average membership of
about 90 persons, are truly banks of the people,
by the people and for the people.

First: The banks' resom'ccs are of the people.
These aggregate about $500,000,000. Of this
amount S375, 000,000 represents the farmers'
savings deposits; $50,000,000, the farmers' cur-

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 215

rent deposits; $0,000,000, the farmers' share
capital; and $13,000,000, amounts earned and
placed in the reserve. Thus, nearly nine-tenths
of these large resources belong to the farmers —
that is, to the members of the banks.

Second: The banks are managed by the people
— that is, the members. And membership is
easily attained; for the average amount of paid-
up share capital was, in 1909, less than $5 per
member. Each member has one vote regardless
of the number of his shares or the amount of
his deposits. These members elect the officers.
The committees and trustees (and often even,
the treasurer) serve without pay : so that the ex-
penses of the banks are, on the average, about
$150 a year.

Third: The banks are for the people. The
farmers' money is loaned by the farmer to the
farmer at a low rate of interest (usually 4 per
cent, to 6 per cent.); the shareholders receiving,
on their shares, the same rate of interest that
the borrowers pay on their loans. Thus the
resources of all farmers are made available to
each farmer, for productive purposes.

This democratic rural banking is not confined
to Germany. As Henry W. Wolff says in his
book on cooperative banks:

216 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

"Propagating themselves by their own merits,
little people's cooperative banks have overspread
German}', Italy, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland,
Belgium. Russia is following up those countries;
France is striving strenuously for the possession
of cooperative credit. Servia, Roumania, and
Bulgaria have made such credit their own.
Canada has scored its first success on the road to
its acquisition. Cyprus, and even Jamaica, have
made their first stai't. Ireland has substantial
first-fruits to show of her economic sowings.

"South Africa is groping its way to the same
goal. Egypt has discovered the necessity of
cooperative banks, even by the side of Lord
Cromer's pet creation, the richly endowed 'agri-
cultural bank.' India has made a begin-
ning full of promise. And even in far Japan,
and in China, people ai'e trying to acclimatize
the more perfected organizations of Schulze-
Delitzsch and Rafi'eisen. The entire world
seems girdled with a ring of cooperative credit.
Only the United States and Great Britain still
lag lamentably behind."

bankers' savings banks

The saving banks of America present a striking
contrast to these democratic banks. Our savings

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 217

banks also have performed a great service. They
have provided for the people's funds safe deposi-
tories with some income return. Thereby they
have encouraged thrift and have created, among
other things, reserves for the proverbial "rainy
day." They have also discouraged "old stock-
ing" hoarding, which diverts the money of the
country from the channels of trade. American
savings banks are also, in a sense, banks oj the
people; for it is the people's money which is
administered by them. The $4,500,000,000 de-
posits in 2,000 American savings banks belong to
about ten million people, who have an average
deposit of about $450. But our savings banks
are not banks hy the people, nor, in the full
sense, jor the people.

First: American savings banks are not man-
aged by the people. The stock-savings banks,
most prevalent in the Middle West and the
South, are purely commercial enterprises, man-
aged, of course, by the stockholders' representa-
tives. The mutual savings banks, most prevalent
in the Eastern states, have no stockholders; but
the depositors have no voice in the management.
The banks are managed by trustees /or the people,
practically a self-constituted and self-perpetuat-
ing body, composed of "leading" and, to a large

218 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

extent, public-spirited citizens. Among them
(at least in the larger cities) there is apt to be a
predominance of investment bankers, and bank
directors. Thus the three largest savings banks
of Boston (whose aggregate deposits exceed
those of the other 18 banks) have together 81
trustees. Of these, 52 are investment bankers or
directors in other Massachusetts banks or trust
companies.

Second: The funds of our savings banks
(whether stock or purely mutual) are not used
mainly for the people. The depositors are
allowed interest (usually from 3 to 4 per cent.).
In the mutual savings banks they receive ulti-
mately all the net earnings. But the money
gathered in these reservoirs is not used to aid
productively persons of the classes who make
the deposits. The depositors are largely wage
earners, salaried people, or members of small
tradesmen's families. Statically the money is
used for them. Dynamically it is used for the
capitalist. For rare, indeed, are the instances
when savings banks moneys are loaned to ad-
vance productively one of the depositor class.
Such persons would seldom be able to provide
the required security; and it is doubtful whether
their small needs would, in any event, receive

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 219

consideration. In 1912 the largest of Boston's
mutual savings banks — the Provident Institu-
tion for Savings, which is the pioneer mutual
savings bank of America — managed $53,000,-
000 of people's money. Nearly one-half of the
resources ($24,262,072) was invested in bonds —
state, municipal, railroad, railway and telephone
and in bank stock; or was deposited in national
banks or trust companies. Two-fifths of the
resources ($20,764,770) were loaned on real
estate mortgages; and the average amount of
a loan was $52,569. One-sevefith of the re-
sources ($7,566,612) was loaned on personal
security; and the average of each of these loans
was $54,830. Obviously, the ''small man" is
not conspicuous among the borrowers; and these
large-scale investments do not even serve the
individual depositor especially well; for this
bank pays its depositors a rate of interest lower
than the average. Even our admirable Postal
Savings Bank system serves productively mainly
the capitalist. These postal saving stations
are in effect catch-basins merely, which collect
the people's money for distribution among the
national banks.

220 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

PROGRESS

Alphonse Desjardins of Levis, Province of
Quebec, has demonstrated that cooperative credit
associations are appHcable, also, to at least
some m-ban communities. Levis, situated on the
St. Lawrence opposite the City of Quebec, is a
city of 8,000 inhabitants. Desjardins himself is
a man of the people. Many years ago he became
impressed with the fact that the people's savings
were not utilized primarily to aid the people pro-
ductively. There were then located in Levis
branches of three ordinary banks of deposit — a
mutual savings bank, the postal savings bank,
and three incorporated "loaners"; but the peo-
ple were not served. After much thinking, he
chanced to read of the European rural banks.
He proceeded to work out the idea for use in
Levis; and in 1900 established there the first
"credit-union." For seven years he watched
carefully the operations of this little bank.
The pioneer union had accumulated in that
period SSO,000 in resources. It had made 2900
loans to its members, aggregating $350,000; the
loans averaging SI 20 in amount, and the interest
rate 6 1/2 per cent. In all this time the bank
had not met with a single loas. Then Desjardins

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 221

concluded that democratic banking was appli-
cable to Canada; and he proceeded to establish
other credit-unions. In the last 5 years the
number of credit-unions in the Province of
Quebec has grown to 121; and 19 have been
established in the Province of Ontario. Des-
jardins was not merely the pioneer. All the
later credit-unions also have been established
through his aid; and 24 applications are now in
hand requesting like assistance from him. Year
after year that aid has been given without pay
by this public-spirited man of large family and
small means, who lives as simply as the ordi-
nary mechanic. And it is noteworthy that this
rapidly extending system of cooperative credit-
banks has been established in Canada wholely
without government aid, Desjardins having
given his services free, and his travelling
expenses having been paid by those seeking his
assistance.

In 1909, Massachusetts, under Desjardin's
guidance, enacted a law for the incorporation of
credit-unions. The first union established in
Springfield, in 1910, was named after Herbert
Myrick— a strong advocate of cooperative finance.
Since then 25 other unions have been formed;
and the names of the unions and of their officers

222 OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

disclose that 11 are Jewish, 8 French-Canadian,
and 2 Italian — a strong indication that the
immigrant is not unprepared for financial de-
mocracy. There is reason to believe that these
people's banks will spread rapidlj^ in the United
States and that they will succeed. For the
cooperative building and loan associations, man-
aged by wage-earners and salarj^-earners, who
joined together for systematic saving and owner-
ship of houses — have prospered in many states.
In Massachusetts, where they have existed for
35 years, their success has been notable — the
number, in 1912, being 162, and their aggregate
assets nearl}^ $75,000,000.

Thus farmers, workingmen, and clerks are
learning to use their little capital and their sav-
ings to help one another instead of turning over
their money to the great bankers for safe keep-
ing, and to be themselves exploited. And may
we not expect that when the cooperative move-
ment develops in America, merchants and manu-
facturers will learn from farmers and working-
men how to help themselves by helping one
another, and thus join in attaining the New Free-
dom for all? When merchants and manufacturers
learn this lesson, money kings will lose subjcM'ts,
and swollen fortunes may siu'ink; but industries

THE OLIGARCH INEFFICIENT 223

will flourish, because the faculties of men will be
liberated and developed.

President Wilson has said wisely:

"No country can afford to have its prosperity
originated by a small controlling class. The
treasury of America does not lie in the brains of
the small body of men now in control of the
great enterprises. ... It depends upon the
inventions of unknown men, upon the originations
of unknown men, upon the ambitions of unknown
men. Every country is renewed out of the ranks
of the unknown, not out of the ranks of the
already famous and powerful in control."

THE END

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